Review by Booklist Review
Ruth Saving returns to her old boarding school for a memorial service expecting a day of polite reminiscence. Instead, she finds herself pulled back into the intensity of old friendships, rivalries, and long-buried crushes. She reconnects with former classmates like Sookie, the glamorous peer who didn't pay much attention to her during their school days, and Mr. Waxham, the charismatic choirmaster who still lingers in her imagination. Ruth finds herself both drawn to and repelled by these encounters, reflecting on her lifelong role as an outsider--someone who observes, admires, and lurks at the edges of other people's lives. Lane (Her, 2015) examines the gulf between how people present themselves and how others remember them. Through Ruth's sharp, often uneasy gaze, Lane explores themes of belonging, self-erasure, and the desperate desire to be seen. The result is sharp, unsettling, and quietly devastating, reminding us how much of our sense of self may be bound up in other people's fun. A quiet, psychologically astute story that will appeal to readers who enjoy tension built from the smallest moments.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lane (Her) offers a sharply observed psychological drama about friendship and the pitfalls of social media. Ruth lives alone after her husband left her and supports herself as a freelance translator. At her high school reunion, almost none of her classmates remember her except for Sookie, now a wealthy health and beauty writer, whom Ruth has been following for years online. As they catch up, Ruth feigns ignorance, afraid to embarrass herself by exposing her fixation on Sookie's success. The two strike up a relationship that looks like friendship, but which Lane shrouds in sinister undertones. Ruth swipes Sookie's designer sunglasses when she's not looking and seethes as Sookie prattles on about feeling adrift without ever asking Ruth about her own travails. As Ruth bitterly reflects, "This is the way it was when we were girls... some people need the light, others shrink from it." Still, she remains eager to please, so she lets Sookie use her apartment for trysts with a lover. A subplot about a sex abuse scandal at their old high school feels shoehorned in, but the narrative's rickety structure is made up for by the women's increasingly complex series of power plays. Like an influencer's feed, this is hard to look away from. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Middleton's third novel (following Alys, Always and Her) features middle-aged empty-nester Ruth. Her husband has moved out, and their divorce is in process; their daughter is away at school. Ruth, who works as a translator, spends her idle time lurking on social media to find information on former classmates; she also likes to filch bath oils, soaps, and tchotchkes from London shops. When she returns to her old school for a memorial service, she reunites with childhood friend Sookie, now a wealthy mother of twins who posts photos on social media from every family event, worldwide vacation, and shopping spree. What follows is the story of how people use each other to get what they want, under the guise of friendship. Sookie paints Ruth as a lonely woman who becomes her alibi; Ruth in turn has every intention of exposing Sookie as the cheating woman she is. VERDICT This biting yet entertaining novel shows self-serving, mean women at their subtle worst. It is also a contemporary fable about the role social media plays in the lives of people in a look-at-me world.--Joyce Sparrow
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A portrait of toxic friendship between a woman who has everything and one who has lost what little she ever had. "Old school friends" would be the easy label for what Sookie Utley and Ruth Saving are to one another, though they've had no contact in the decades since they left their fancy British boarding school, and they weren't friends back then, either. Sookie remembers Ruth only because she let her crib from her essays; Ruth remembers the beautiful and popular Sookie primarily for fainting during a school concert, at which point the music teacher Ruth herself was infatuated with--Ian Waxham--lifted Sookie up and carried her out "like that scene inAn Officer and a Gentleman." Ruth is a familiar creepy character in the emotional thriller genre: socially awkward, miserably lonely, insecure, jealous, judgmental, mildly kleptomaniac. And, though the exact nature of her husband's disappearance is withheld for so long that you start to suspect funny business, he has simply left her for another woman. What won't Ruth do to make herself feel better? Filching Sookie's Stella McCartney sunglasses is clearly just step one. Despite the fact that she can't stand her, Ruth acquiesces to Sookie's need for a doormat friend she can burden with her endless self-involved chatter, which revolves around her irritating first-world problems and her extramarital affair with…none other than ol' Waxham! In fact, she and Waxham need a spot to rendezvous. How about Ruth's place? This short novel tracks Ruth's growing need and evolving schemes for revenge, its predictable lineaments invigorated by Lane's sharp writing and observational skills. If Lane is ready to try her talents on another type of story, readers will follow. Connoisseurs of queasy female self-hatred will find their favorite dish here. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
