About this item
A dazzling, razor-sharp debut novel about a woman whose obsession with the beautiful actress on her block drives her to the edge.In this superb new psychological thriller, an unraveling woman becomes fixated on her neighbor--the beautiful, successful actress. Trapped in a rundown apartment and dead-end job, the unnamed narrator is unhappily childless and recently separated. She can't help noticing with wry irony that the actress, meanwhile, has her face on the side of every bus, a gleaming brownstone, a handsome husband, and three beautiful children, including a baby. Though they live just a few doors apart, the two women are separated by a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment.Obsessed with her collapsed marriage, her relationship-ending infertility, the daily injustices she suffers at the hands of her expensive and exhausting city, and, most of all, with her movie-star neighbor, the narrator initially seems bitter but benign.
About the Author
Laura Sims's debut novel, Looker (Scribner) , was published to critical acclaim in early 2019; The Wall Street Journal called it "a sugarcoated poison pill of psychological terror" and Grazia (UK) called it "dazzlingly creepy storytelling." Looker, an Indie Next Great Reads Pick, was named a Best Novel of 2019 by Vogue, Esquire UK, CrimeReads, and The Star-Ledger, and a Best New Book by People, Entertainment Weekly, CosmoUK, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Southern Living, Popsugar, and other media outlets. Looker has been optioned for television by Entertainment One and Emily Mortimer's King Bee Productions. Sims has also published four books of poetry, including, most recently, Staying Alive; her first poetry collection, Practice, Restraint, was the winner of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize. Sims has been the recipient of a US-Japan Creative Arts Fellowship, and her poetry and prose have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and other journals. She lives in New Jersey with her family.
