Looker by Laura Sims

 

Looker by Laura Sims

" Many of this story's elements—a narrator reeling from the end of her marriage, her voyeuristic obsession with her seemingly-perfect neighbor across the street—will feel familiar to anyone who loves a good thriller. And yet, Sims' little hand grenade of a book brought more darkness, more bitterness, and a greater sense of foreboding than I ever expected. Our narrator's descent from despair into madness is both sad and scary, and the fact that Sims can tell her story so completely in well under 200 pages is an accomplishment indeed. "  - Recommended by Erika
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Looker: A Novel (Hardcover)

By Laura Sims
$25.00
ISBN: 9781501199110
Availability: Special Order
Published: Scribner - January 8th, 2019

In this taut and thrilling debut, an unraveling woman, unhappily childless and recently separated, becomes fixated on her neighbor—the actress. The unnamed narrator can’t help noticing with wry irony that, though she and the actress live just a few doors apart, a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with her face on the side of every bus, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and their three adorable children, while the narrator, working in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat.

When an interaction with the actress at the annual block party takes a disastrous turn, what began as an innocent preoccupation spirals quickly, and lethally, into a frightening and irretrievable madness. Searing and darkly witty, Looker is enormously entertaining—a psychologically suspenseful and fearlessly original portrait of the perils of envy.