‘Anger is more fun than grief. And revenge is better still’.
Some of enjoyed John Lancherser’s novel Capital (2012) and its BBC Adaptation, so we were keen to read his latest novel Look What You Made Me Do (2026). It is shorter and focused on the two main characters Kate and Phoebe, with first-person narration from each in turn interspersed with extracts from Phoebe’s TV script. It is a revenge story, sharply satirical with the theme of the relationship between entitled baby boomers versus bitter millennials.
Kate is in her 60s, happily married to Jack, an architect, living in the stylish house he has designed for them. They are childless, affluent and self-satisfied and Lanchester makes fun of their middle-class North London way of life – pretentious dinner parties, good works and even Kate’s book club (get the book discussion out of the way and then enjoy a good gossip). Then Jack suddenly dies and everything changes.
Phoebe on the other hand, is in her 20s, a script writer with a misery of a complaining mother and, as she admits, not a very nice person. She has recently completed the script for a TV series Cheating about a couple having an illicit affair in the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It has exploded into an enormous success which everyone is talking about, but when Kate sees it she is horrified that it closely echoes what has gone on in her own marriage and she surmises that Jack must have been having an affair so that her seemingly happy marriage was a sham.
The novel then centres on the conflict between the two women (no spoilers) and its devastating conclusion. As such it is a thriller, but it is also a dark satire with implications of the dangers of technology for the future of all of us. Lanchester’s strength lies in his keen ear for dialogue and pretension – such as the dinner party based on ‘60s recipes which they all enthuse over or when Phoebe takes her mother out to dinner, steeling herself for all the inevitable complaints and it turns out to be a taster menu. There is a contrast between Kate’s carefree University years when she’s an adept shoplifter and able to steal Jack from his girlfriend, and Phoebe’s hard work to support herself and break free from the ties of her mother.
We all enjoyed the book despite its implausible coincidences and the fact that we were reading about two very unpleasant people. It was well written – an easy enjoyable read albeit with dark overtones.
Our next book is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans