Looker by Laura Sims

Reviewed by Kristin

The narrator is never is named, but that does not seem to matter. She describes herself as a youthful middle-aged woman, a non-tenure track college lecturer recently separated from her husband, Nathan. She is the center of this tale.

The other unnamed woman is “the actress”. She lives down the street from the narrator in her perfect house, with her perfect husband, her perfect children, and her perfect face plastered across busses and movie screens alike. The actress has everything that the narrator does not have.

As the narrator’s life continues to spiral downward, she becomes more and more obsessed with the actress. Chance and planned encounters on the street and at the block party escalate the tension as the narrator tries to gain the attention of the actress.

Looker is the debut novel from Laura Sims, who later wrote How Can I Help You, the book that I recently reviewed here. 

The two novels have some things in common—ratcheting tension, women characters caught in some form of obsession, and a big bang at the end. However, the second book’s characters are not just repeats of the narrator and the actress. Sims certainly knows how to write explosive short fiction, and I think we have not seen the last of her.

Looker warning: there are a couple of violent scenes, one of which bothered me far more than the other. It was brief and although it was not just gratuitous violence, I still found it unpleasant and shocking.