Reconstructive facial surgery after a car crash so alters Manhattan model Charlotte that, within the fashion world, where one's look is oneself, she is unrecognizable. Seeking a new image, Charlotte engages in an Internet experiment that may both save and damn her. As her story eerily converges with that of a plain, unhappy teenager - another Charlotte - it raises tantalizing questions about identity and reality in contemporary Western culture. Jennifer Egan's bold, innovative novel, demonstrating her virtuosity at weaving a spellbinding, ambitious tale with language that dazzles, captures the spirit of our times and offers an unsettling glimpse of the future.
Look at Me
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Review
"Brilliantly unnerving. . . . A haunting, sharp, splendidly articulate novel."" "-"The New York Times"
"Comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written. . . . An energetic, unorthodox, quintessentially American vision of America." -"The New Yorker"
""Look at Me" is so engrossing, energetic, sharp, and funny, it reminded me of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, "Invisible Man."" -Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" (NPR)
"Arresting. . . . "Look at Me "is the real thing-brave, honest, unflinching. [It] is itself a mirror in which we can clearly see the true face of the times in which we live." -Francine Prose, "The New York Observer
"
"Egan limns the mysteries of human identity and the stranglehold our image-obsessed culture has on us all in this complicated and wildly ambitious novel." -"Newsweek"
"Intriguing. . . . An unlikely blend of tabloid luridness and brainy cultural commentary. . . . The novel's uncanny prescience gives "Look at Me "a rare urgency." -"Time"
"Egan has created some compelling characters and written provocative meditations on our times. . . . [She] has captured our culture in its edge-city awfulness." -"The Washington Post Book World"
""Look at Me" is a complicated novel . . . but the questions it raises are worth following a lifetime of labyrinths toward the answers." -"Los Angeles Times"
"Ambitious, swiftly paced. . . . Egan writes with such shimmering elan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey." -"The Wall Street Journal"
"Prescient and provocative. . . . The characters . . . jump from the pages and dare you to care about them. . . . The prose is crisp and precise. . . . The pieces fit together at the end with a satisfyingclick." -"Philadelphia Inquirer"
"Impressive. . . . Few recent books have so eloquently demonstrated how often fiction, in its visionary form, speaks of truth." -"Salon.com"
""Look at Me "makes us think about our trust in the images that bombard us, and what we give away in the process." -"Chicago Tribune"
"Egan's rich new novel . . . is about bigger things: double lives; secret selves; the difficulty of really seeing anything in a world so flooded with images." -"The Nation"
"Stunning. . . . This is more than a story, it's a thought-world, a novel of ideas brilliantly cloaked in the skin of characters." -"The Sunday Oregonian"
"Egan's take . . . is surreal and profoundly ironic and exaggerated, but it still rings true. . . . Beneath it all, she finds characters worth saving." -"Hartford Courant"
"Breathtaking. . . . Combines the tautness of a good mystery with the measured, exquisitely articulated detail and emotional landscape of the most literary of narratives. . . . Sure to leave readers thinking about these very real characters for some time to come." -"BookPage"
"An imaginative, well-paced read with serious questions about the elusiveness of meaning inside the gilded cage. Egan has intelligence to burn but plenty of feeling too." -"People"
"Part mystery, part cultural critique, ["Look at Me"]"," . . build[s] to a conclusion that is unexpected and disturbing, and mak[es] an incisive statement about our society's obsession with fame and glamour." -"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Riveting. . . . As the book gains momentum, Egan's writing is both fluid and driven, with wonderful slashes of satire. . . . A remarkable study of our culture . . . and of ourpalpable need to be known." -"O: The Oprah Magazine
"
"Egan has created a compelling world. . . . With [her] graceful prose and vivid characterizations, she navigates her plot lines' churning waters with admirable skill." -"Seattle Weekly"
"[A] scintillating inquiry into the complex and profound dynamics of perception. . . . Egan . . . animates a superb cast of intriguing and unpredictable characters, and tells an elegantly structured, emotionally arresting and slyly suspenseful story." -"Newsday"
"Dark, hugely ambitious. . . . As riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny." -"Elle"
"Intelligent and refreshingly dark, Egan's eerie tale has the same mesmerizing pull as the culture it skewers." -"Us Weekly"
"This masterfully plotted work bears the stamp of a perceptive-if not clairvoyant-writer whose disturbing vision . . . rings all too true." -"SF Weekly"
"Egan's ability to move with ease between sincerity and satire sets "Look at Me" apart. . . . Her authentic-feeling details give a sense of unusual immediacy." -"Vogue"
"Comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written. . . . An energetic, unorthodox, quintessentially American vision of America." -"The New Yorker"
""Look at Me" is so engrossing, energetic, sharp, and funny, it reminded me of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, "Invisible Man."" -Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" (NPR)
"Arresting. . . . "Look at Me "is the real thing-brave, honest, unflinching. [It] is itself a mirror in which we can clearly see the true face of the times in which we live." -Francine Prose, "The New York Observer
"
"Egan limns the mysteries of human identity and the stranglehold our image-obsessed culture has on us all in this complicated and wildly ambitious novel." -"Newsweek"
"Intriguing. . . . An unlikely blend of tabloid luridness and brainy cultural commentary. . . . The novel's uncanny prescience gives "Look at Me "a rare urgency." -"Time"
"Egan has created some compelling characters and written provocative meditations on our times. . . . [She] has captured our culture in its edge-city awfulness." -"The Washington Post Book World"
""Look at Me" is a complicated novel . . . but the questions it raises are worth following a lifetime of labyrinths toward the answers." -"Los Angeles Times"
"Ambitious, swiftly paced. . . . Egan writes with such shimmering elan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey." -"The Wall Street Journal"
"Prescient and provocative. . . . The characters . . . jump from the pages and dare you to care about them. . . . The prose is crisp and precise. . . . The pieces fit together at the end with a satisfyingclick." -"Philadelphia Inquirer"
"Impressive. . . . Few recent books have so eloquently demonstrated how often fiction, in its visionary form, speaks of truth." -"Salon.com"
""Look at Me "makes us think about our trust in the images that bombard us, and what we give away in the process." -"Chicago Tribune"
"Egan's rich new novel . . . is about bigger things: double lives; secret selves; the difficulty of really seeing anything in a world so flooded with images." -"The Nation"
"Stunning. . . . This is more than a story, it's a thought-world, a novel of ideas brilliantly cloaked in the skin of characters." -"The Sunday Oregonian"
"Egan's take . . . is surreal and profoundly ironic and exaggerated, but it still rings true. . . . Beneath it all, she finds characters worth saving." -"Hartford Courant"
"Breathtaking. . . . Combines the tautness of a good mystery with the measured, exquisitely articulated detail and emotional landscape of the most literary of narratives. . . . Sure to leave readers thinking about these very real characters for some time to come." -"BookPage"
"An imaginative, well-paced read with serious questions about the elusiveness of meaning inside the gilded cage. Egan has intelligence to burn but plenty of feeling too." -"People"
"Part mystery, part cultural critique, ["Look at Me"]"," . . build[s] to a conclusion that is unexpected and disturbing, and mak[es] an incisive statement about our society's obsession with fame and glamour." -"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Riveting. . . . As the book gains momentum, Egan's writing is both fluid and driven, with wonderful slashes of satire. . . . A remarkable study of our culture . . . and of ourpalpable need to be known." -"O: The Oprah Magazine
"
"Egan has created a compelling world. . . . With [her] graceful prose and vivid characterizations, she navigates her plot lines' churning waters with admirable skill." -"Seattle Weekly"
"[A] scintillating inquiry into the complex and profound dynamics of perception. . . . Egan . . . animates a superb cast of intriguing and unpredictable characters, and tells an elegantly structured, emotionally arresting and slyly suspenseful story." -"Newsday"
"Dark, hugely ambitious. . . . As riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny." -"Elle"
"Intelligent and refreshingly dark, Egan's eerie tale has the same mesmerizing pull as the culture it skewers." -"Us Weekly"
"This masterfully plotted work bears the stamp of a perceptive-if not clairvoyant-writer whose disturbing vision . . . rings all too true." -"SF Weekly"
"Egan's ability to move with ease between sincerity and satire sets "Look at Me" apart. . . . Her authentic-feeling details give a sense of unusual immediacy." -"Vogue"
Book Description
The stunningly well praised second novel from Jennifer Egan the author of the bestselling A Visit from the Goon Squad, which also won the Pulitzer Prize.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 60 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
'Look at Me' has been republished on the back of the success of Jennifer Egan's multi-award winning A Visit From the Goon Squad. I'm always reticent to read these resurrected books; if they are any good, why did they go out of print in the first place? But of course, publishing is a fickle art; all too often, great books sink without trace. 'Look at Me' has an intriguing premise and 'Goon Squad', made such an impression on me (it's a book that seems to get better the more I think about it), I thought I would have to give it a try.
'Look at Me' is a heavier read than 'Goon Squad', weighing in at over five hundred pages. It's a much more conventional novel, with a traditional narrative flow and not a single PowerPoint slide in sight.
The book follows two Charlottes. The first is a former model, who has undergone extensive facial reconstruction after a near-fatal car crash. She finds herself on the outside of the world she used to know; unrecognised and unwanted by a profession where appearance is everything and experience counts for little. The other Charlotte, a teenage girl in a decaying Midwestern town, has yet to discover who she is. She has tried many faces, but which one is the real Charlotte?
Though quite different in tone to 'Goon Squad', 'Look at Me' covers similar ground. If Goon Squad was about gaps in memories and how time changes perception, 'LAM' is about the gap between how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others, and more, how we want to be perceived. With her new face giving her an opportunity to reinvent herself, Charlotte (the model) finds herself paralysed by indecision, before embarking upon an ambitious internet-based project, based almost entirely on lies. The ensemble cast lends strength to the theme of shifting identity - a failed college sports hero, who sees the world like nobody else does, and a shadowy figure from somewhere in the middle-east. Is he a terrorist, or something else altogether?
The book is curiously of its time; a snapshot of the early 21st Century preserved in aspic. Completed in early 2001, 'Look at Me' is set in New York, and involves a hidden fundamentalist cell. As Egan says in an afterword, the novel would have been very different had it been completed a year later. In some ways, the content of 'LAM' is so remarkably prescient, it's unbelievable the book isn't already more widely known. Similarly, the internet project is an idea not entirely dissimilar to Facebook. At the time of writing I imagine this was speculative creation, ripe with potential. Now it it seems a naïve shadow of mass market social networking sites. In the author's own words the novel is 'an artefact of a more innocent time.', and worth reading just for that.
It's not all plain sailing. This book does feel long, especially in the middle, when I began to feel like I was treading water. Egan is definitely guilty of using a single long word, when a couple of simple words would have sufficed. Sometimes this gives the novel some literary heft, other times it just feels pretentious and deliberately obtuse.
'Look at Me' reminded me of two novels I greatly admire. Though different in subject matter to both Intuition and The Emperor's Children, all three novels have the same sprawling analysis of relationships in the twenty-first century. 'TEC' is a particularly interesting comparison as it was written post 9/11, and deals with a teenager's struggle for identity.
Overall I enjoyed 'Look at Me'. It makes for a good companion novel to 'Goon Squad', and some may even prefer it due to its lack of quirks. I found it a little dry in places, but 'Look at Me', once again, shows Egan to be a fine commentator on the human condition.
'Look at Me' is a heavier read than 'Goon Squad', weighing in at over five hundred pages. It's a much more conventional novel, with a traditional narrative flow and not a single PowerPoint slide in sight.
The book follows two Charlottes. The first is a former model, who has undergone extensive facial reconstruction after a near-fatal car crash. She finds herself on the outside of the world she used to know; unrecognised and unwanted by a profession where appearance is everything and experience counts for little. The other Charlotte, a teenage girl in a decaying Midwestern town, has yet to discover who she is. She has tried many faces, but which one is the real Charlotte?
Though quite different in tone to 'Goon Squad', 'Look at Me' covers similar ground. If Goon Squad was about gaps in memories and how time changes perception, 'LAM' is about the gap between how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others, and more, how we want to be perceived. With her new face giving her an opportunity to reinvent herself, Charlotte (the model) finds herself paralysed by indecision, before embarking upon an ambitious internet-based project, based almost entirely on lies. The ensemble cast lends strength to the theme of shifting identity - a failed college sports hero, who sees the world like nobody else does, and a shadowy figure from somewhere in the middle-east. Is he a terrorist, or something else altogether?
The book is curiously of its time; a snapshot of the early 21st Century preserved in aspic. Completed in early 2001, 'Look at Me' is set in New York, and involves a hidden fundamentalist cell. As Egan says in an afterword, the novel would have been very different had it been completed a year later. In some ways, the content of 'LAM' is so remarkably prescient, it's unbelievable the book isn't already more widely known. Similarly, the internet project is an idea not entirely dissimilar to Facebook. At the time of writing I imagine this was speculative creation, ripe with potential. Now it it seems a naïve shadow of mass market social networking sites. In the author's own words the novel is 'an artefact of a more innocent time.', and worth reading just for that.
It's not all plain sailing. This book does feel long, especially in the middle, when I began to feel like I was treading water. Egan is definitely guilty of using a single long word, when a couple of simple words would have sufficed. Sometimes this gives the novel some literary heft, other times it just feels pretentious and deliberately obtuse.
'Look at Me' reminded me of two novels I greatly admire. Though different in subject matter to both Intuition and The Emperor's Children, all three novels have the same sprawling analysis of relationships in the twenty-first century. 'TEC' is a particularly interesting comparison as it was written post 9/11, and deals with a teenager's struggle for identity.
Overall I enjoyed 'Look at Me'. It makes for a good companion novel to 'Goon Squad', and some may even prefer it due to its lack of quirks. I found it a little dry in places, but 'Look at Me', once again, shows Egan to be a fine commentator on the human condition.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Bookman
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Published with extraordinary prescience a day or so from 9/11, this long novel deals with Charlotte a model whose face is reconstructed after a car crash, her friend's daughter, also called Charlotte, and an terrorist mole -- presumably Islamic, but this is never spelt out -- who ends up walking away from the atrocity he is planning. The mole is a made-up character, and you can tell -- wholly unconvincing, particularly in the light of what we now know about the 9/11 hi-jackers. The two Charlottes, by contrast, are brilliantly done. Jennifer Egan writes about the secret lives of women with a marvellous vividness and frankness. The only contemporary writer who can touch her in this regard is Curtis Sittenfeld.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Felis
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
A fantastically observed and well written earlier title from this writer, which got me interested in discovering her other writing now which I shall sample on Kindle first. Has both moments of cynical and sad observation about a wasted life, a feverish account of a threat to society which was written before 9/11 and proved to be prophetic, and a gentle sense of humour which in the end redeems the story and gives the reader hope and strength. I did not find a false, contrived note in the whole book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Okay - just
Bought this after finishing this author's Goon Squad had been read and thoroughly enjoyed. If I'd read this first I may have enjoyed it much more, but I was constantly reading it... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Kindle Junkie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pure delight
I came to this novel having read (twice, because I loved it so much) Egan's brilliant A Visit from the Goon Squad. Look at me is every bit as well-written. Read more
Published 21 days ago by Poppy Hall
2.0 out of 5 stars
Ok
Just couldn't get into the book. Don't think that half the characters even really needed to be in the book or made sense
Published 1 month ago by Vixs
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not for me
I struggled through 58% of the novel, which seemed rather disjointed and trying to create an air of mystery - it didn't work. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs J Grebby
1.0 out of 5 stars
I would not choose to read this book
I read this book as part of my Book Reading Group selection. The object of joining a group like this was to introduce myself to books and authors that I would never usually read. Read more
Published 2 months ago by sheilamary3
1.0 out of 5 stars
Look At Me- No Thanks
I downloaded this book because it was one of the kindle daily deals, but I wish I hadn't. The reviews of the book made it sound intriguing and interesting, but I was to be bitterly... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mrs C
2.0 out of 5 stars
Had so much promise...
What an anti-climax. There were parts I enjoyed, parts I skimmed over due to the lengthy boring descriptions and characters that I just didn't see the point in. Read more
Published 11 months ago by lovesakindledailydeal
2.0 out of 5 stars
The more I read it, the less I cared about it
Look At Me is the story of Charlotte Swenson, a model whose face is damaged so badly in a car crash, that following reconstructive surgery she becomes unrecognisable to those who... Read more
Published 12 months ago by R. A. Davison
2.0 out of 5 stars
So boring I gave up reading (something I NEVER usually do)
I started reading this a couple of months ago when I first purchased it. I kept putting it down and picking it up - finally this week I stopped beating myself up and asked myself... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ms. CJ Taylor
3.0 out of 5 stars
Best I can say is "it's OK".
There wasn't anything seriously wrong with this book, at least not that I can put my finger on. Theoretically it had plenty in it (both plotwise and characterwise) to make it... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mike N
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