Staff Pick
"Read me": it's an invitation, a command, a short sentence as beguiling as anything Alice ever encountered in Wonderland. Similarly, picking up this book is like falling down the rabbit hole, a tumble into the labyrinthine corridors of one man's mind. The man who narrates this book is complicated. He likes to watch people, likes it more than he should, and he devotes himself to his subjects. All of this watching gives him a lot of time to think and he meditates at length on his process, the philosophical and moral implications of his thoughts and actions. Read Me is a shudder-inducing treatise on the dubious art of stalking, of observation warped by sinister intentions — a creepy, circular read guaranteed to make you mistrust strangers! Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Hitchcock's Rear Window meets Messud's The Woman Upstairs in this unnerving, superbly crafted novel which takes readers deep into the mind of a serial stalker and, through him, the lives of his unsuspecting victims.
Try it yourself. Go out, pick somebody and watch them. Take your phone and a notebook. Persist. What begins as a confluence of yours and another person's journeys, on the train maybe or leaving a cinema, gets into an entanglement. You follow, feeling that it's not really following because you're going the same way, then when they at last reach their office you feel the clutch of a goodbye. It's normal. But how many times do you think the person being followed has been you? READ ME is a seductive, haunting novel that holds a sinister mirror up to the ways in which we observe, judge, and influence people. Benedictus' prose commands and draws readers into the dark, manipulative mind of a serial stalker as he targets women across London, escalating his efforts until he settles on Frances -- a bright young professional whose career is set to take off -- whose life he proceeds to unravel from the inside, out.
READ ME is a chilling rumination on power, manipulation, complicity, anonymity, and just how vulnerable we are to the whims of others -- people we may not even know.