After her friend stands her up, Louise stands up to leave the bar and literally bumps into a handsome man, spilling his drink on him.
Her comically dowdy next-door neighbor is babysitting Louise’s school-age son, Adam, and the opening is all light and girly: nothing ominous, nothing gritty, just glossy. The premiere episode kicks off in Louise’s nothing-fancy London flat as she’s anxiously primping for a rare night out with a gal pal. In the series, though, Louise is portrayed with open-faced, affable sincerity by Black British actress Simona Brown. And because I began (but to clarify, haven’t finished) the book, I can tell you that the biggest page-to-screen change I’ve noticed so far is that in the book, Louise is white. Then there’s the question: To read the book, or not to read the book? I never know what the right answer is, so I’ve split the difference: I started reading Behind Her Eyes, which was published in 2017 and written by prolific British novelist Sarah Pinborough. ( Blake Lively’s A Simple Favor pantsuits forever!) Meanwhile, feeling like I also can’t look away because the whole production is just so sumptuous, stylish, and chic is always, for me, a nice bonus. To put it more plainly: I want the cinematic equivalent of the unputdownable quality that so many of the books these movies are based on possess. I want to feel like I can’t look away, not just because I need to know what comes next and how it all ends, but also because I’m helplessly invested in the characters despite their infinite gray shadings and the lengthy pro/con lists of their virtues and faults, I want the good guys (or at least, the guys I perceive to be good) to get their happy endings while the baddies get their comeuppances.
(It is 3 p.m on a Saturday as I work my way through Behind Her Eyes’ six episodes, and I am still in my pj’s and halfway into a tub of rocky road.)Ī Perfect Murder, Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Gone Girl, A Simple Favor, The Girl on the Train: When I think about that Venn diagram of suspenseful psychological crime thrillers, the maybe-crazy-woman genre, and the unreliable-female-narrator device, what I want most is something sleek and sudsy, twisty and tantalizing, with a story line that keeps me not just involved but entwined. It’s also me, thinking about watching Netflix’s Behind Her Eyes adaptation, hoping the whole series indeed turns out to be something decadent, something great for a weekend of lying in and eating ice cream. That’s Louise, one of the two female protagonists in Behind Her Eyes, on page 31 of the copy of Sarah Pinborough’s novel that I borrowed soon after getting this assignment. Eat cheap pizza and ice cream and maybe watch a whole series of something on Netflix.”
“I’m going to have a decadent weekend of me.
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