Look at Me: A Novel

Jennifer Egan

Dec 2009 · Sold by Anchor

About this ebook

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • In this ambitiously multilayered novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, a fashion model named Charlotte Swenson emerges from a car accident in her Illinois hometown with her face so badly shattered that it takes eighty titanium screws to reassemble it.

She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied.

With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society.

As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.

Ratings and reviews

This was a horrible novel. I am not a picky reader and generally enjoy any fiction novels that I pick up, but this was an exception. The premise sounded promising, and I pushed myself to read to about half way of the book and I couldn't continue -very rare for me because I don't like giving up on an author's hard work. It was far too ambitious in a negative sense, as if Egan wants to show off her knowledge or research of a variety of topics and tried to cram it all together into one book to show how clever she really is. I found it difficult to sympathize with the main character Charlotte, and found the character Z completely absurd, from his "spy" name to the bits of information of his past that are far too dramatic for my liking, especially his internal monologues and struggles. I really wanted to like this book, but got so frustrated that I had to hide it on my bookshelf and I am actually quite eager to trade it in to a second hand shop for something else. Truly disappointing. I am sure Egan is a fantastic writer, and at times I did see glimpses of it, but the plots in her story here need to be simplified. Less is more.

The first time I read this, I didn't like it as much as 'Goon Squad', but I liked it enough to want to re-read it. The first time, I didn't relate to the main character. Two years and twenty or so novels later, I deeply appreciated the awsome writing skills of Jennifer Egan. I also understood and related more to the characters. This is the first time that I have finished a book that I have tried to re-read.

About the author

Jennifer Egan is the author of four novels: A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus; and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.