The relationship between identical twins has long fascinated popular culture, from Sebastian and Viola in Twelfth Night to Fred and George Weasley in Harry Potter. But getting publishers – as well as Hollywood – overheated are Beth and Alvina Knightly, the lookalike twin sisters in Mad, Chloe Esposito's debut novel. The book is a portrait of just how low that relationship between two people with the same face and genome can sink.
"There's something you should know before we go any further," announces self-styled bad-girl Alvie on the opening page of a book already sold in translation to 25 countries, and in pre-production by the film studio that made Fifty Shades of Grey. "My heart is in the wrong place... on the right. My sister's heart is in the right place. Elizabeth is perfect through and through."
"But doesn't everyone find identical twins fascinating?" asks Esposito, when I congratulate her on her big break. "What potential for jealousy and conflict."
Esposito is surprisingly at ease after being suddenly thrust into the spotlight by a book-and-film deal with several noughts. She is clearly no ingenue. The only child of a French mother and a father whose intelligence work could never be mentioned, she always had her nose stuck in a book.
"I didn't have anyone to play with at home. But all my friends had brothers and sisters, so I saw the relationship between sisters, and it was often nasty, violent and toxic. I thought what would make me the most insanely jealous ever? What about if I had an identical twin sister more successful than me, more beautiful than me, richer than me, married to the man I was in love with."
And that is the premise of the novel, set at Beth's luxury villa on Sicily, complete with her good-looking husband, Ambrogio, her infant son, and her walk-in-wardrobe stuffed with designer labels. Alvie visits and seizes her chance in the pages of this racy, pacey Mafia-infused thriller to become her sister for a week.
The plot owes a debt (freely acknowledged) to the global phenomenon that was Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn's 2012 page-turner about the woman who outsmarts men at their own game. "I loved her," Esposito enthuses, "but she's so humourless."
Mad, therefore, is not so much the new Gone Girl, but "Gone Girl plus". Esposito has added a dollop of Bridget Jones to the mix: "It is kind of a black comedy – Bridget gone bad, 20 years on. She never had Tinder, for example."
Now we are getting on to another striking aspect of Mad – the sex. Once in Sicily, Alvie works her way, hectically and graphically, through almost every man in her sister's circle, including her oh-so-gorgeous brother-in-law who turns out to be not oh-so-desirable in bed.
Turning the tables on men in the bedroom by describing in centimetre-perfect detail what women really want might cause others to blush, but not Esposito."If it were a man sexually objectifying women in the way Alvina does men, for example, you wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. It is just what guys do."
Not content merely to entertain, Esposito is keen to enter the gender war. "We forgave Trump for grabbing women by the p----. He was elected president with women's votes. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton had been going around grabbing guys by their crotches? It is gloves-off time for women."
She is hearing the same rallying cry, she says, in the work of a younger generation of women comedians capturing the zeitgeist – the likes of American stand-up Amy Schumer.
"For me, Mad is a feminist novel for this generation. I know that the really strict, strident feminists will read it and think Alvie's a bad feminist because she is using her sexuality to manipulate men. But it is all about female empowerment."
One striking feature of Alvie is her utter disinterest in her sister's infant son. "Alvie only wants the baby because it is Beth's. He is an accessory," Esposito agrees. "She has no maternal love."
It's a hard thing for one woman to say about another, even if she is character in a book. "But I wanted to break the taboo," Esposito replies fiercely. "This is a story. And there are women out there who regret having children but don't feel able to speak out. They suffer in silence."
Some readers will inevitably wonder, with such a strongly drawn character, if Esposito isn't also sharing part of herself. She shakes her head vigorously.
"Everyone has a shadow side, their subconscious desires, but this is, I promise you, just me letting my imagination run wild. In real life, I'm a good girl. Mad is complete escapism."
London Telegraph
MAD
Chloe Esposito
Michael Joseph $32.99 (from June 19)