It’s a rare occasion when I read a book review before finishing the novel myself—as noted, for the past 10 years I read strictly fiction in print; my head’s already exploded from the digital junk consumed during the day—but will do so afterwards. On this occasion, I took in the opinion of New York Times critic Alexandra Jacobs, and it was mind-numbingly suited to her agenda. Had David Brooks remained with the Times, this is the exact lecture he’d have given.
On the recommendation of an older brother I read John Lanchester’s splendid Look What You Made Me Do, published earlier this year; oddly it was the first of his books I’ve taken in, although I did watch the TV adaptation of his 2012 novel Capital, and liked it. Lanchester’s a satirist, on the left, which matters little to me, and Look What You Made Me Do, a page-turner that, roughly, is a generational battle, and contrary to Jacobs’ Times mostly favorable review, I was taken by most of the characters, even if there’s no clear protagonist.
In short: Kate and Jack, a long and happily-married couple in their early-60s, live a very comfortable life in London, with a smattering of friends they lightly make fun of after an occasional dinner party. Near the beginning, Jack suddenly dies, putting Kate into a long grief-laden tailspin, made worse by a popular Netflix show called Cheating by thirtysomething Phoebe, which leads Kate to believe Jack was a womanizer. She’s doubly-distraught, and believes all her happy memories of their life together have been destroyed. The plots gets complicated, like a very good whodunit, and the resolution is satisfyingly tidy.
Jacobs is mostly guilty of very bad prose. She writes: “[Lanchester’s book] is a well-knit dark domestic fiction that enfolds the reader quickly and comfortably, like an expensive cashmere scarf. It concerns revenge as a dish serve cryogenically cold, with a beefy side of bitcoin… When [Jack] is polished off… in the same undignified position as Judy Garland and Elvis, you are not terribly sorry.”
I was sorry—Jack, though bombastic, is pretty funny—although it’s a necessary device. Phoebe, who lives with wormboy Tony (the only character II disliked) mostly out of convenience, is the wittiest non-protagonist I’ve come across this year. Lanchester fills pages with Phoebe’s withering, and paranoid, observations, and some are worth reading twice. Jacobs doesn’t mention Conor, a rich tech guy not yet 30, who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and whom Kate forms a friendship in her position as a prison counselor.
Here’s Jacobs’ bias (at 58, and successful, it’s likely she owns more than one cashmere scarf): “It’s not the paragons of virtue who are rewarded here but the schemers and double-crossers. ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ looks at the friction between boomers and millennials; haves and have-nots; the guilty who get with it and the innocent unfairly blamed or framed.”
Except for an occasional bum that Kate, and Phoebe, encounter on a bus, train or long walk in London, there are no “have-nots” in this story, and any overt “friction” between boomers and millennials—also, Jack and Kate, who fell in love at Oxford in the mid-1980s, aren’t boomers, but Gen-Xers—isn’t at all evident. There’s not a single main character, regardless of age, who isn’t affluent. Although Jacobs says it’s “a deft piece of hen lit,” the class war she desires isn’t there.
The accompanying photo that I took with a snap-and-shoot is going to the well again, featuring Kropotkin Records—a hangout in my teens, not unlike Tribeca’s Riverrun and Puffy’s in my 30s—show high school pal Mike Bifulco (who went on to become an accomplished guitarist) on the left and co-owner Rob Witter at the makeshift register. This isn’t purposeful nostalgia but an accurate image of a lifestyle at that time. You won’t see a row of periodicals at stores anymore, and a clean rack of LP’s before CDs and then streaming music services took over.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Wallace Stegner’s Angel of Repose, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, Tom Tyron’s The Other, Alice Muno’s Lives of Girls and Women, Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker and Joan Garrity’s The Sensuous Woman are published; Pablo Neruda wins the Literature Nobel prize; Paul Zindel takes the Drama Pulitzer; Airport receives 10 Oscar nominations; Mariner 8 fails to launch; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is inaugurated in D.C.; Chris Shiflett is born and Igor Stravinksy dies; Vida Blue is the American League’s MVP; Tom Seaver has MLB’s lowest ERA (1.76); Nolan Ryan is traded from the Mets to the California Angels; and John Mayall’s Back to the Roots is released.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023