Take the fabulously gripping two-narrator structure of Gone Girl, apply – à la Notes on a Scandal – to contemporary female friendship (or perhaps that should read “frenemy-ship”), and the result is Her: a scalpel-sharp, deeply sinister thriller that is all the more potent for going undercover in ordinary domestic life.
The novel circles around two women who live streets apart in north London. Emma, nudging middle age and mother of two, is a shadow of her former TV-exec self. Managing children “requires every scrap of my energy” along with the domestic drudgery in her bijou, shabby terrace : “just the act of tidying up the chaos seems to generate more chaos”. Reliant on her husband’s insecure freelance income, and with her life on hold, Emma’s predicament is instantly recognisable to a fair few new mothers.
Her counterpart, Nina, seems to have her life under control. In her airy, smart and chaos-free house, Nina is a vision in Prada (because everyone knows what the devil wears). She has an established career as an artist, an older architect husband and a teenage daughter from a previous relationship who is almost ready to fly the nest. In short, Nina embodies everything Emma would like to be.
Unbeknown to Emma, their histories are intertwined deep in the past — but although Nina recognises Emma from the outset, she makes no mention of the connection. Sleep-deprived Emma is none the wiser as Nina proceeds to orchestrate a friendship in a creepily plausible manner, returning a “lost” wallet; and later — spoiler alert — returning a “lost” child.
As it becomes apparent that Nina bears a grudge against Emma – a grudge that is unexplained until the very last chapters – the tension between the two points of view escalates. Emma innocently goes about her business as Nina stalks her “friend” and snoops around the corners of her life (not to mention her house). In the absence of any detail about what Emma’s offensive action might have been, the reader can’t judge whether Nina is justified in this level of (some might say) madness.
When Nina invites Emma for a holiday to her composer father’s glamorous south-of-France abode, Lane ratchets up the apprehension with a maestro’s skill we first saw in her debut, Alys, Always. And while the ending – “apocalypse-quiet” — does not disappoint, the only thing that niggles is Nina’s reason for wishing revenge on her “friend”. Yes, it turns Nina into a monster; but for this reviewer, a suddenly two-dimensional one. But if that is the only negative in this artfully written and otherwise perfectly pitched thriller, it is a minor one. Read it: everyone else will be.
• Her is published by Phoenix, £7.99. Click here to buy it for £5.99
