The Watcher
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- €5.99
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- €5.99
Publisher Description
She’s watching you, but who’s watching her?
Lily Gullick lives with her husband Aiden in a new-build flat opposite an estate which has been marked for demolition. A keen birdwatcher, she can’t help spying on her neighbours.
Until one day Lily sees something suspicious through her binoculars and soon her elderly neighbour Jean is found dead. Lily, intrigued by the social divide in her local area as it becomes increasingly gentrified, knows that she has to act. But her interference is not going unnoticed, and as she starts to get close to the truth, her own life comes under threat.
But can Lily really trust everything she sees?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bird and people watcher Lily Gullick, the narrator of Armstrong's uneven debut, uses binoculars to observe her neighbors in nearby flats in London. She names them, invents stories about them, and talks to her husband, Aiden, about them. Lily lives in a new apartment building, while older buildings across the street are slated to be demolished and their residents "rehoused" elsewhere. Lily tries to befriend Jean, a resident resisting demolition, and when Jean is murdered, she becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Only gradually does the reader get a clear picture of Lily as she reveals more about herself and her troubles with other people, including the police. Alfred Hitchcock fans will appreciate the many nods to the famed director, from the obvious Rear Window scenario to Aiden's planned book on Hitchcock, but this novel, with no memorable characters other than Lily, fails to generate much suspense.)
