By Danielle Bettendorf, Living & Arts Editor
At one point in “Looker” by Laura Sims, the narrator drops a glass dish to the floor, then picks up the broken pieces and takes them home.
Reading “Looker” felt like reading those broken pieces and trying to make something of this book.
I first heard about the book from “Bustle” earlier this year, so though I was intrigued by the vague thriller premise, this was a real disappointment for me.
This review will not be spoiler-free – it’s a short book and has been out for a little over three months, so I’m going all in here.
This was marketed as a mystery/thriller, but it’s definitely a character study following one woman.
Had I known that going in, I might have liked this more, but I was so frustrated when I finished the book that I couldn’t really enjoy the conclusion.
The book uses the unreliable narrator trope so frequently that it really doesn’t make an impact – I know thrillers are big right now, but this really feels like it’s just jumping on the trend.
Over and over we are subjected to the narrator’s thoughts of befriending or becoming the actress – even going so far as to imagine herself sleeping with the actress’ husband or kidnapping the actress and keeping her captive in her home.
When the results of the narrator’s actions come around to her at the end of the book, I wish I felt something, anything in response.
While the book opens with light stalking, it ramps up to the point that the narrator has killed by the end of the book. I actually liked the ending – the narrator accepts her actions as sirens wail in the background – as a conclusion to everything that had happened, but that temporary satisfaction was nothing compared to slogging through the rest of the book.
While this was relatively short for a book, it was way too long for my taste. You’d think that in under 200 pages, there wouldn’t be any excess in the book, but there was a lot that could have been cut.
With the ending tying everything together, I could see this more as a short story – especially because it got so boring hearing the same things over and over again.
I feel like this book could have made a powerful statement had it not been so all over the place.
The narrator is a hot mess – after years of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant ,her husband files for divorce. With no real friends or family, she dives further into her long-standing obsession with her neighbor, the actress.
There were points in the book where I felt like it could have made some strong femi- nist points, but they never quite came together.
The basis of the narrator’s insecurity comes from her inability to get pregnant and when her husband leaves her, she struggles to keep control in her life by refusing to give back his cat. As she deliberates on what the neighborhood must think of her, she attempts to subvert her presumed notoriety as an unstable woman. Despite this substantive bit, the narrative never comes off as more than the trope of a “crazy ex” who struggles to cling to reality.
There’s also an attempt at a plot involving her and a student, but it never really feels like it goes anywhere. They go back and forth with flirting and going out for drinks and by the time they sleep together, the narrative is pretty muddled.
When the student comes forward to accuse her of misconduct, the story gets so messy that I really wish it hadn’t been included at all.
There’s some commentary on how the coworker who handles her accusation has multiple accusations of his own and the different dynamics of when women accuse men and men accuse women.
Truthful versus false allegations are only hinted at and never fully addressed, which underscores the themes being included at all.
Picking out feminist bits from this book felt like trying to pick up broken pieces of glass after the narrator threw her dish onto her neighbor’s yard in order to cause a disruption. What you’re looking at is something that could have beennice, but doesn’t fit together.
This is a book made up of what-could-have-beens and I wish that even though it was so short, I didn’t feel like I wasted my time reading it.
