Name: Look What You Made Me Do
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)

John Lanchester

Look What You Made Me Do

A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee. "Every successful marriage has its own private language." So it is for baby boomer Kate and her beloved architect husband Jack, thirty years into their seemingly idyllic metropolitan North London life. And so it is for spiky millennial screenwriter Phoebe and her charming loafer of a partner, Tony. But when Phoebe’s steamy television series Cheating becomes the year’s most talked-about show, Kate thinks she sees in it details and intimacies of her marriage that only she and her husband could possibly have known. Who has betrayed whom? Who has stolen whose story—and why? A black comedy of love, trust, resentment, and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the sharply observed and suspenseful story of two very different women from two very different generations, entangled in a battle only one of them can win.

A Novel

I thought we were off to a good start when the novel read every architect I know for filth (though, I am happy to say that I do know what sumac is and, no, I did not need someone coming from a forcefully occupied territory who has served under the occupational forces to explain what it is to me). But then it sort of dragged on and I really struggled to care about any of these characters.

The twist was good at first, too, but then it quickly went of to woo-woo territory and I found it killed its gravity a little. There is also a strange trend of punishing people who have been wronged and I am sure this is some meta commentary about society, though frankly nothing about this novel truly says it wants to commit to any real commentary.

It is still a relatively quick read - just a little underwhelming.

I thought we were off to a good start when the novel read every architect I know for filth (though, I am happy to say that I do know what sumac is and, no, I did not need someone coming from a forcefully occupied territory who has served under the occupational forces to explain what it is to me). But then it sort of dragged on and I really struggled to care about any of these characters.

The twist was good at first, too, but then it quickly went of to woo-woo territory and I found it killed its gravity a little. There is also a strange trend of punishing people who have been wronged and I am sure this is some meta commentary about society, though frankly nothing about this novel truly says it wants to commit to any real commentary.

It is still a relatively quick read - just a little underwhelming.

Look What You Made Me Do

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