Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic is a complex and disturbing book about identity, technology, and addiction in the digital era. This literary fiction-wrapped psychological thriller examines the unsettling ways in which social media may conflate truth and illusion, as well as self and others.

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The protagonist of the book is 23-year-old British woman Alice Hare, who goes to New York supposedly to get back in touch with her grandmother. Her actual voyage, however, turns into a severe, spiraling obsession with urban Japanese writer Mizuko Himura. Alice’s fixation starts on the internet, where she painstakingly follows Mizuko’s life because she believes their paths are somehow connected. She quickly manipulates her way past mental and physical barriers to enter Mizuko’s real-world orbit.

When Alice sees Mizuko as a sort of mirror or twin, she puts her desires, anxieties, and insecurities onto her, turning what starts out as curiosity into something more sinister. However, the story develops as a slow-burning psychological drama about power, control, and the need for connection in a time of carefully manicured identities, and Mizuko is also a person fashioned by pain and secret.
Deeply detailed, Sudjic’s book explores issues of self-construction, digital voyeurism, and surveillance. Alice is a victim and a predator, illustrating how social media promotes compulsive consumption of other people’s lives as well as self-exposure. The writing, which reflects Alice’s fractured sense of self, is intensely introspective and occasionally verges on stream-of-consciousness.

The way that Sympathy depicts the contradiction between online and offline identities is among its most remarkable features. Just as Alice’s self-image is influenced by the stories, she tells herself, Mizuko’s meticulously manicured online persona conceals her inner turmoil. The book also discusses trauma, cultural relocation, and family history, which deepens Alice’s quest for purpose and kinship.
Sympathy is a powerful, psychologically complex, and even quite uncomfortable emotion. Readers seeking a more linear storyline may become frustrated by Sudjic’s captivating but occasionally convoluted style. Nonetheless, Sympathy is an intriguing and unsettling examination of what it means to see and be seen for individuals who are interested in the nexus of technology, identity, and human obsession.