Ira Levin's Sliver

Sliver is a 1991 suspense thriller by Ira Levin. I think you could argue that it also qualifies as a techno-thriller. There was a 1993 film adaptation staring Sharon Stone.

Ira Levin (1929-2007) was an immensely successful American writer who tended to jump around from genre to genre. He gained initial success with the noirish crime thriller A Kiss Before Dying. He wrote horror (Rosemary’s Baby) and science fiction (The Stepford Wives) as well as thrillers such as The Boys from Brazil.

Sliver takes place in a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan. It’s a fairly high-tech building but the residents don’t know just how high-tech it is.

Kay Norris has just moved in. She’s a 39-year-old book editor, still very attractive but starting to become aware that she’s not as young as she was. When she catches herself having rather lustful thoughts about one of the other tenants she is a bit shocked by herself. The guy is cute but he couldn’t be more than 27 or so.

There are some interesting connections between some of the tenants, connections that go back many years, connections which will become important later.

What the reader knows but Kay doesn’t is that she is being watched. All the tenants are being watched. They have no idea that the building boasts an incredibly sophisticated surveillance system. They are being monitored by hundreds of cameras. Only one person knows about this - the person who installed the surveillance system. It was installed in absolute secrecy. This person lives in the building. He owns the building.

Kay eventually finds all this out, at which point the story takes some really interesting twists. Not just plot twists but psychological twists.

This is not a conventional study of an abnormal personality. It is that, but it becomes a study of abnormal relationships as well.

This is clearly a story about voyeurism but it’s not primarily about voyeurism as a sexual kink. The sexual kink element is a fairly minor aspect of the novel. The movie adaptation puts a bit more emphasis on the sexual aspect and it can be described as an erotic thriller. I would not however call the novel an erotic thriller. There is a scene in the book in which the voyeur watches Kay masturbating and masturbates while watching her but perhaps surprisingly that is the only such incident in the novel. It is not what really drives this particular voyeur.

It’s interesting to compare it to Hitchcock’s classic voyeurism movie Rear Window. There are intriguing similarities and intriguing differences.

In Rear Window the voyeur/protagonist Jeff (James Stewart) does enjoy watching the pretty dancer he refers to as Miss Torso getting undressed but that’s merely added spice. What really fascinates Jeff is seeing into other people’s lives and discovering their secrets. And that’s the drawcard for Sliver’s voyeur. He is excited by the idea of discovering other people’s secrets, and excited by the fact that they don’t know he is watching them.

The chief difference compared to Hitchcock’s film is that in Rear Window the voyeur/protagonist Jeff (James Stewart) only has partial information - he only knows what he can see through the curtains that happen to be open. Rear Window has a strong mystery element so this works in the movie’s favour. Jeff has to solve the mystery based on partial information. In Sliver the Voyeur can see and hear everything. There is no mystery in Sliver. We know the identity of the killer from the start.

And interestingly the voyeur in Sliver does not seem to be interested in the power that knowing those secrets could offer him. To make use of those secrets in such a way would be to risk exposure. His motivation is simply the joy of knowing these secrets and knowing that his targets have no idea that their secrets are no longer secrets.

What makes Sliver interesting is the suggestion that a woman can enjoy this kind of voyeurism. And it’s believable. Women are fascinated by secrets. The voyeur’s addiction could be shared by a woman. It could become a shared obsession.

An interesting moment comes when the voyeur reveals that he is using the same equipment that the FBI uses to spy on us. That’s really what the novel is all about. We’re living in a society in which we are being constantly watched, whether we like it or no. Even in 1991 Levin could see that privacy was becoming a thing of the past. We are becoming a society in which we are all subject to high-tech voyeurism.

While Sliver plays around with a few observations on the direction in which society is heading it doesn’t have a particular ideological axe to grind. It does deal with voyeurism in a reasonably complex way but mostly it’s a fine intelligent suspense thriller/techno-thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I reviewed the movie Sliver (1993) not too long ago. A lot of people hate this movie but I like it rather a lot.