Look What You Made Me Do

A middle-aged widow’s life is upturned when intimate details of her marriage become fodder for a TV show in the well-plotted latest from Lanchaster (The Wall). After Kate Hittlestone’s husband, Jack, suddenly dies, she’s consumed by grief. Months later, she hears about a hit new series called Cheating, which chronicles an affair between a man Jack’s age and a much younger woman. The dialogue eerily echoes Kate and Jack’s “private language” (“Want your body, disco doll” means “please hurry up, we’re going to be late”), causing Kate to conclude that Jack must have had an affair with the show’s millennial writer, Phoebe Mull. Awash with shame and humiliation, Kate revises all her happy memories with Jack until she realizes there might be another explanation. The true story of the show’s genesis slowly comes out in a parallel narrative following Phoebe’s relationship with her mother. Both plotlines come to a head when Phoebe, worried she won’t be able to repeat her success, becomes convinced someone is targeting her with bad online reviews. Lanchester blends the emotionally layered revenge story with a satirical battle of the generations, summed up in a magazine profile of Phoebe (“She’s so sharp she could cut herself. Except... she’s much more likely to cut you. Especially if you’re a boomer”). This satisfies. (May)