59 pages • 1 hour read
David EllisLook Closer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Deceptive Nature of Appearances
Content Warning: This section briefly mentions racism, sexual assault, addiction, abuse, suicide, and violence.
Many aspects of the novel emphasize that appearances cannot be trusted. Every marriage portrayed in the novel involves some level of dissonance between the outward picture and the actual relationship. Simon and Vicky are only pretending to be married to enact revenge on Lauren and Christian/Nick. Ted Dobias is unfaithful to his wife, and Monica cheats on her husband and divorces him due to her addiction. Lauren Betancourt marries unhappily for money and lives apart from her wealthy, older husband. On the surface, these relationships appear to be picture perfect, but underneath they are all dysfunctional.
The theme is also emphasized by the novel’s title, which cautions readers to Look Closer. While it seems obvious from the beginning of the book that Simon and Vicky are deceiving each other, the twist reveals that the reader is also being deceived. Ironically, Simon and Vicky turn out to have a loving and stable, if very unconventional, relationship and are using the disguise of an unhappily married suburban couple to get revenge on Christian/Nick and Lauren. Christian/Nick and Lauren also rely on appearances to con their victims. They use their physical beauty to seduce and ruin gullible people. Though it should be obvious that these relationships are “too good to be true,” their victims focus on the appearances and do not dig further. Ironically, Christian/Nick is so quick to believe the lie of the diary because he believes Lauren is using the same techniques he does.
The only character in the novel who can see past these appearances is Jane, who believes Simon is guilty and knows that he has an accomplice named Vicky. However, no one else believes her because they are so focused on how things appear. Simon thinks, “The evidence is lining up away from me. And yet, Jane is certain she is looking at a guilty man. I always remembered her as a smart one” (408). Though Jane is intelligent, she is ultimately unable to convict Vicky and Simon. A large part of her failure is due to political pressure on the chief of police to close the case. He tells Jane, “It’s not supposed to happen here. That’s why they live here. So when it does happen, they need to know we’re going to solve the case quickly” (424). This overemphasis on the appearance of safety means that the real perpetrators escape.
The Dispensation of Justice
Justice is a central concern of crime and detective fiction. Typically, the protagonist is a detective or other character who seeks to uncover the guilty party and see them face consequences for their crime. In Look Closer, police investigator Jane Burke fulfills this traditional role, using the legal system to pursue justice as the law defines it. Though Jane is aware of Lauren’s past misdeeds, she still seeks to prosecute Simon for her murder, as she believes that justice must be found within the legal system. Simon and Vicky represent the opposing view—pursuing their own personal sense of justice even if it means breaking the law. Ultimately, their view prevails, as no one believes Jane’s ideas about the murder and she is forced to let Simon go.
Ironically for a man who has devoted his life to teaching the law, Simon commits three murders in his pursuit of revenge. He believes that the only way to avenge his mother’s suicide is to kill his father and Lauren. While he acknowledges that “virtually every moral code and penal code would condemn my actions” (441), he insists that what he has done is justifiable because it is an act of war: “My father and Lauren declared war on my mother and me. They killed her, and I killed them back” (441). Vicky also believes that one might need to step outside the law to find justice. She kills Nick because he was responsible for Monica’s addiction and suicide, but she also entraps Paul Southern and helps Simon blackmail him to keep his job. Her reasoning is that the wealthy like Southern and the dean will play by different rules and that it is necessary to play dirty to fight back. Working at a domestic violence shelter has also taught Vicky that the law is not always adequate to protect the innocent.
Look Closer explores the tension between legal and personal definitions of justice. Vicky’s lived experience makes it clear to her that legal justice is not always moral justice: Despite its stated ideals, the legal system is embedded in hierarchies of class and status that mean it does not always treat everyone equally. At the same time, as an agent of the law, Jane realizes that if everyone pursues their own personal sense of justice, the result will likely be chaos. Christian/Nick and Lauren have committed crimes without remorse, but, in Jane’s view, it’s not up to Simon and Vicky to pass sentence on them. Vicky and Simon are good people who only sought to right wrongs that could not be righted otherwise, but in doing so they have put themselves at odds with the law. Ellis questions the incorruptibility of the legal system and the line between justice and revenge, leaving final judgment up to his readers.
The Traumatic Effects of Suicide on Survivors
The trauma that spurs both Simon and Vicky to embark on their quest for revenge is the suicide of a close family member. Look Closer explores the traumatic effects suicide has on survivors and shows how the grief and anger from this loss can cause lasting damage. Simon is shaped by his father’s betrayal and his mother’s death. His law career, his relationship with Vicky, and everything else in his life is affected by Glory’s suicide. Vicky is similarly impacted by Monica’s death. She devotes her life to avenging Monica and to helping Adam raise her nieces because she cannot forgive herself. She almost dies as well, surviving only due to Simon’s interference: She calls Simon “the guy who forced me into rehab, who paid for the whole thing, and who was waiting for me when I came out” (433). Both Vicky and Simon turn to their relationship to cope with their loss and trauma.
Simon and Vicky initially meet at the support group Survivors of Suicide, where Simon regularly leads sessions. He counsels his group members to understand that they are not responsible for the death of a loved one, saying, “We are so unwilling to give up this notion that we control things and people around us that we’d rather feel guilt over the suicide than admit that we didn’t have that control in the first place” (123). Simon understands that there is truth to this statement, but he cannot apply it to his own life. Instead, he sees himself as a soldier, creating with Vicky “a plan of attack […] declaring war on our grief” (123). In fact, he and Vicky never seem to deal with their grief except by enacting revenge on Lauren and Christian/Nick.
At the end of the novel, Vicky expresses doubt about what she achieved with the revenge plot. She tells Simon, “Sometimes I think what I did to Nick was all about me. A way of soothing my own guilt. I didn’t bring Monica back, did I? I didn’t give those girls their mother back. What other purpose did it serve?” (447). Though Simon tries to reassure her that she rid the world of a bad person, Vicky is acknowledging something different—that killing Christian/Nick did not undo her sister’s death and did not magically heal the wound left behind by her absence. For Vicky as well as Monica’s husband and girls, that trauma cannot be reversed.
