Why Look What You Made Me Do Is This Month’s Unmissable Book Club Read
It appears the fiction’s latest obsession is the wildly unlikable protagonist. It’s a divisive trend, and a risky one, but I’m firmly on board. John Lanchester’s latest novel, Look What You Made Me Do, delivers dislikeability in abundance, and the result is a novel that had me turning pages faster than I could actually read them. Here’s my honest review.
The premise
Many things drew me to this book. I’ll admit the strikingly good cover caught my eye first (see my uncensored opinion on judging books by their covers here), but it was the premise that truly held my attention.
The plot follows Kate, who has spent thirty years building what looks, from the outside, like an enviable life in North London with her architect husband Jack.
Enter Phoebe, a millennial screenwriter whose hit TV show becomes the talk of the year. The catch? The contents of the TV show is filled with intimate details and anecdotes from Kate’s marriage.
What follows is a slow unravelling of who has actually betrayed whom, and whose story this really is to tell. It’s billed as a black comedy of resentment, revenge and entitlement, and it earns that description on every page.
Many things drew me to this book. I’ll admit the strikingly good cover caught my eye first, but it was the premise that truly held my attention.
Amelia, Culture & Lifestyle Editor
What worked
This book made me laugh out loud more than once, which is no mean feat. Take the satirical passage on Ottolenghi. It spans two pages and is arguably Lanchester at his best. It pokes fun in the most entertaining way and is absolutely hilarious. So much so that I found myself going straight back to re-read it moments after.
Take the satirical passage on Ottolenghi. It spans two pages and is arguably Lanchester at his best. It pokes fun in the most entertaining way and is absolutely hilarious.
I also found this book unputdownable and truly gripping. It’s the kind of novel you can polish off in a handful of sittings because you simply don’t want to stop. The chapters move quickly, and the prose never feels heavy, which makes the whole thing feel wonderfully digestible for a book with so much going on under the surface. And yes, you might see the ending coming from a mile off, but honestly, that didn’t spoil a thing for me.
The power of an unlikable protagonist
After perusing Goodreads, it came to my attention that most people’s gripe with this novel is how dislikable, more or less, all the characters are.
However, in my opinion, there’s something about a protagonist you can’t quite root for that makes a story so much more interesting, and Lanchester leans into that fully here.
We’ve seen plenty of this energy this year already, in books like Yesteryear and I Want You to Be Happy, and I understand why some readers find it exhausting. But for me, it does the opposite. It forces me to read more analytically, to question motives and pick sides less easily, and honestly, it just tends to make for a far more entertaining read.
We’ve seen plenty of this energy this year already, in books like ‘Yesteryear‘ and ‘I Want You to Be Happy‘, and I understand why some readers find it exhausting. But for me, it does the opposite.
Final thoughts
Look What You Made Me Do is sharp, funny and thoroughly uncomfortable in all the right ways. Lanchester has meticulously crafted two female protagonists who are in equal measure hard to love but impossible to look away from, and wrapped them in a plot that will have you hooked from the first page. If you’re tired of tidy, likeable characters, this one is well worth your time.
Lanchester has meticulously crafted two female protagonists who are in equal measure hard to love but impossible to look away from, and wrapped them in a plot will have you hooked from the first page.
Will you be adding this to your reading list?
Looking for something similar? Read these next
Possibly the most deeply unlikeable narrator in recent fiction, and that’s the whole point. A satire on publishing and cultural appropriation that’s uncomfortable, addictive and very funny in places. This is another one that I raced through and is well worth picking up.
The unlikeable narrator to end all unlikeable narrators. If you’re drawn to characters who are hard to root for but impossible to stop reading about, start here.
Odd, dark and consistently funny, with a protagonist who makes some genuinely questionable choices. It has that same feeling of watching a train wreck you can’t look away from.
Our October pick
If you loved the sharp, uncomfortable energy of Look What You Made Me Do, next month’s pick keeps that streak going.
Fruit Fly follows Mallory, a one-hit novelist stuck years past her big moment, who stumbles across Leo, a young man battling addiction, and decides he might just be the story she needs to save her career.
What starts as research quickly turns into something far murkier, as Mallory blurs every line between empathy and exploitation in pursuit of her comeback. It’s quickly becoming the season’s buzziest book (no pun intended), so pick up a copy and get reading!
