I loved Sims' most recent novel, How Can I Help You, when I read it last year, and it prompted me to see what else she had written. Looker is her only other novel, and I loved it just as much as HCIHY.

The unnamed narator (I am pretty sure she is unnamed - it's a first person narrative and very interior so her remaining unnamed would make sense...) has just been left by her husband after a long struggle with infertility. This event has sent an already fragile woman into a downward spiral, most obviously displayed in her obsession with her neighbor, "The Actress." The Actress seems to have it all, and the narrator wants some of it. Even if it's just something small, pilfered from the yard. Or even if it's just The Actress' husband, with whom she imagines having an affair...

In sharp, strong, and sometimes funny, prose, Sims paints a stark portrait of a woman on the edge juuuuust.... as she.... begins to..... tip.... over it. It's really well done, and the excellent narration of the audiobook added a lot to my experience of the novel. I can see a lot of people not loving this one like I did, but if it sounds up your alley, or you liked Sims' latest novel, give it a whirl.

4.5 stars ( )

Obsession

Yet another divorcee in new york book except there just wasn't any reason to like the narrator, she was just crazy not crazy for a reason, and the "shocking finale" was boring and who cares. ( )

Spoilers ahead. The only reason I read this the whole way through, was was an attempt to take my mind off several big worries. Were I in a better mood originally, I'd have likely set the book down early on. This first-person, present-tense novel is classed as a thriller. I wonder if there was a mix up in the marketing department with another novel. This is an incessantly whiny manifesto of mind-numbing proportions. The unnamed narrator-protagonist does nothing to gain desperately-wanted sympathy and effortlessly instead gains my unimpressed annoyance. I'd feel more sympathy as a fellow infertile person if she'd stop wailing about it for pages at a time. Despite her level of despondency, it doesn't occur to her to go to a support group about it, nor does she reach out to her friend that she goes out to lunch with often. The woman was so whiny about everything in her life that I actually started to side with her ex, Nathan. She was insufferable about the separation. -And infertility and separations usually get instant sympathy from me.-

She's definitely an unreliable narrator, which does little to make a book suspenseful for me. I usually think uncharitable thoughts. The narrator has an odd fixation on one of her adult students and blames him for her own sexual thoughts. Sims tried to write sexual tension and failed, then spent six pages on the sex scene between student and professor-narrator. The narrator mentions her masturbation habits for no apparent reason throughout the novel. Her supposed obsession with the actress takes up less than five percent of the novel, and feels more like a more intense celebrity crush than usual. Nowhere in the book was I too worried for the actress' safety or that of her kids. If the picnic had happened within the first ten pages instead of over halfway through, it could have been an interesting inciting event. If she'd shoved the actress instead of her elderly neighbor, I would have actually believed she was obsessed with her. This book was really poorly paced. I'm an avid suspense reader, and I was bored.

Ultimately, this is a book where not much happens. An underemployed poetry professor whose husband walked out whines a lot. She thinks too much, drinks too much, gets fired for sleeping with a student, kills her ex's cat, and shoves her elderly neighbor so hard she presumably dies, all while sometimes thinking of an actress she likes who lives nearby. One nice thing about the book is that I was indeed so bored that I stopped worrying about my circumstances for a bit. ( )

I agree with reviewers on Goodreads who say this book is being incorrectly marketed as a thriller. It’s not a thriller in the traditional sense of fast-paced plot twists and a satisfying whodunnit. This one is a slow and unnerving character study of a woman slowly becoming undone.

After years of fertility treatments and trying for a family, the unnamed narrator, estranged from her husband, now lives alone with her ex’s cat. Soon, she becomes fixated on her seemingly perfect neighbor and obsessed about making a good impression at the neighborhood block party.

Occasionally funny but also profoundly unsettling, I really enjoyed this short and elegantly crafted book about a woman slowly and subtly unraveling at the seams. Like a car stuck on the train tracks, you might guess at the inevitable, catastrophic conclusion, but you also can’t look away. ( )