Behind Her Eyes
by Sarah Pinborough
First Posted March 2017
I tried to engage with Book of the Month for many years. Books, though, are a decent time commitment, so having less agency in what you’re reading is not particularly useful for someone who knows what the want (e.g., me). The best thing to come out of this book, in my opinion, is me having the chance to clearly articulate my thoughts on the video game Knights of the Old Republic, which is my synecdoche for surprise-twist culture.
I think this review encapsulates my hesitancy with even mentioning that a book relies upon—or has—a twist.
“Books like this” are read for the twist. Unlike the terribly middling review I did for Gone Girl where I tried not to talk about anything plot-related, I will definitely assume you have read this book. Weird twist-fiction is basically its own genre now, unless this is always what thrillers have been and I simply didn’t know it. Would I group Death on the Nile in with Behind her Eyes? No, I would not. But then, I suppose murder-mystery is different from thrillers, and I really do need to be moving on now.
If you haven’t read this book, don’t read this review. Also, I’m going to talk about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, hereinafter KoTOR, a computer game from 2003. Don’t even start to complain about spoilers; you’re not going to play it.
Right, so, KoTOR. My old college roommate played KoTOR before I did and loved it so very much. If my memory serves, he was floored by what ended up being a very Behind Her Eyes twist. It didn’t hurt that it was a very good game: it had the Bioware choke-point structure of three-plus scenarios that you can tackle in any order before you can move past the main plot gate—we hadn’t yet recognized that they did it in every game—and also lightsabers, The Force, etc.
KoTOR has you start out as a nameless shlub and eventually become a bad-ass Jedi; a standard video game conceit of linear, accelerated power-gain which normally gets hand-waved away because montages take too long and it is more fun to be a powerful Jedi than a lame-o weakling. In this case, though, the gameplay mechanics match the story; you were once a Darth Vader-esque figure marauding through the galaxy before a bunch of Jedi wiped your memory and befriended you in hopes their kindness would turn you towards the Light Side (leaving aside the morality of destroying memories and tricking you into friendship. And the technicality that you were more a Palpatine, because you were the boss, than a Vader, who is the more hands-on underling and is more accessible to the general public and so makes my analogy a bit clearer). That’s why you get so strong in Lightsabering and force-blasting so quickly; you are secretly Darth Revan, you are already really strong, and you are simply remembering your power, not earning it.
The twist that your player character was secretly the big bad was not something I fell for. Perhaps it was because I was already on the lookout for a stunning plot twist; my roommate’s, “You’ll never see it coming!” hype—very similar to Book Of the Month Club’s, “You think you know the ending? You don’t!” language for Behind Her Eyes—probably prepared me. But also, my Revan was a boy. A good boy who joined the Light Side; you can, in fact, embrace the Dark Side which is—spoiler for KoTOR 2—the canonical choice.
Right, so, what I mean by emphasizing the gender is that you are forced to design your own player character. You make him. Or her. And that’s the rub; my roommate’s character was a woman. So it just never clicked for him—probably because Star Wars is filled with default imagery of bad guys being guys and also general sexism against women being autonomous competent actors for good or ill without playing up the fact that they’re women first and heroes/villains second—that his player character used to be this awe-inspiring avatar of death. Nothing against my old roommate; I am not calling him sexist even a little bit. For me, playing as a standard male hero, that twist seemed like it was obvious from about twelve parsecs away.
Which is how I feel about Behind Her Eyes; it is sold on its unexpected twist. And unless you’re insulated by extreme heteronormativity, I simply cannot imagine the twist in Behind Her Eyes being very surprising. It is telegraphed so far in advance I was sure it was a red herring. You really should stop reading if you care at all about reading this book yourself.
Right, so, Adele can astral project. And so can Louise. It is clear that Adele is preparing to take over Louise’s body once they’re both floating around. And one other person can also astral project; Rob, the missing guy who loves Adele but not romantically because, “Ew, girls are icky!” Unless you purposefully ignore that homosexuality exists, it is clear as day that Rob has infested Adele’s body.
The only real question that remained for the last half of the book was whether Adele was still in there, locked behind her eyes. When the Rob “revelation” didn’t happen page after page after page, my assumption that it was the “pre-ending” fake twist to cover the actual last page much-hyped twist—which I figured would be of Louise screaming into the void, unable to control her body as she looked out from behind her own eyes—was all for nought.
So I guess I didn’t expect the ending, because I expected it to be the middle. Like KoTOR’s Revan Revelation, if it catches you unawares I bet you’ll be pretty impressed. But unlike KoTOR—or Gone Girl, whose twist completely got me but also had an impressive command of narrative voice—I don’t see much else that makes Behind Her Eyes memorable.