Looker - A Novel

One of Vogue's Best Books of 2019

_Vogue, Best Novels of 2019
_CrimeReads, Best Fiction Debuts of 2019
_Star-Ledger, Top Ten New Jersey Authors of 2019
_EsquireUK, Best Books of 2019 So Far
_People, Best New Books of the Week
_Southern Living, Best New Books of Winter 2019
_Entertainment Weekly, Hottest Reads of January
_CosmoUK, Best New Books of January
_Vogue, Lit Hub, and CrimeReads, Most Anticipated Books of 2019

In this taut, arresting debut, a woman becomes fixated on her neighbor-the actress.

Though the two women live just a few doors apart, a chasm lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with a charmed career, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and three adorable children, while the recently separated narrator, unhappily childless and stuck in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband's cat.

As her fascination grows, the narrator's hold on reality be gins to slip. Before long, she's collecting cast-off items from the actress's stoop and fantasizing about sleeping with the actress's husband. After a disastrous interaction with the actress at the annual block party, what began as an innocent preoccupation turns into a stunning-and irrevocable-unraveling. Immersive and darkly entertaining, Looker is a searing psychological portrait of obsession.

Rezension:

"[Looker] is an ephemeral fiction with a hard landing-like a window, seen in passing, that glows and goes dark."
-The New Yorker

"Looker is a sugarcoated poison pill of psychological terror, whose wit and fluency cover its lacerating diagnosis of the deranging effects of envy, perhaps the most widespread social sickness of our age. The novel disturbs because we are all, to some degree, susceptible to the bacillus of the narrator's insanity. And her symptoms may be more recognizable than we care to admit."
-Wall Street Journal

"It's easy to imagine that stars live gauzily perfect lives. But what happens when the illusion turns deadly? In Sims's creepy debut, a woman fixates on the actress living across the street, admiration tilting into pathology as events in her own life-infertility, her husband's desertion-unmask her fragility. The ultimate unreliable narrator, she reveals her instability slowly. By the end you'll be gasping."
-People Magazine
< br> "A wicked slow-burn . . . . Looker glides toward its ending as if eagerly awaiting the discovery of something ghastly."
-Entertainment Weekly

"I loved Looker for its take on the female gaze, and its understanding of what it means for women to look at each other...this is a novel I had been craving: an unflinching portrayal of women looking upon each other as disturbingly as men do."
-The New Statesman

"Is Looker a warning? A character study? An exploration of grief? A critique of American culture? It is all of these things, as well as a novel about what it means to be seen-and what it means to be unseen. Most essentially, it is a heady thriller that asks a reader to engage with a narrator who has been told by circumstance that she has nothing to live for, and who fills the empty spaces in her life with an unhealthy obsession. Lookerdemands the reader look at-really gaze at, live with, and experience-dangerous obsession, but more pointedly, the societa l expectations that might lead to it in the first place."
-Ploughshares

"Reading Looker, it is clear that Sims's background is in poetry, because each word is chosen for maximum effect and evokes a visceral reaction in the reader. As you read, you can feel the urban setting all around you and you feel pulled along in the protagonist's life, embarrassed when she is, confused when she is and angry when she is. This is not a protagonist with whom you necessarily sympathize, but you will keep turning the page to see what happens next and to let Sims's prose wash over you. Will you feel a bit uneasy after reading Looker? Probably. Will you regret reading it? Absolutely not."
-Essex News Daily

"A spectacular debut novel ... Sims' masterful ending caps a book which does everything right.
-The Newark Star-Ledger