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Look at Me

by Jennifer Egan (Goodreads Author)

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 4,642 ratings · 662 reviews

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.

Charlotte’s narrative is interwoven with those of other casualtie...more

Paperback, 544 pages

Published October 8th 2002 by Anchor (first published September 18th 2001)

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Sep 22, 2012 karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

yay! friends read books togeeeether! and now i can finally link our reviews!

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

i wish i had read this when it first came out. and i am mad at myself for not loving this book as much as everyone else seems to have - when i read other reviews of it, i am jealous that it didn't grip me as much as it did others, as much as her other books have gripped me.

there are definite strengths here. she demonstrates an uncanny and impressive cultural prescience; the way wi...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, girls-girls-girls

Karen and I read this book at roughly the same time. Read her review here.

Look at Me I'm giving a weak four stars, if there were half-stars it would be a three and a half. Right after I finished reading this I started Egan's collection of short stories Emerald City, and I'm happy I gave Look at Me four stars, so that I could give the story collection three stars and feel like the three Egan books I've read are clearly rated according to my enjoyment of them. I don't know what will happen if I re...more

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Sep 27, 2009 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

You read certain books like you down that sixth beer or the oversized slice of cheesecake, so delighted in the moment, but soon thereafter the nagging doubt: "was it worth it? was it really all that?" Or maybe there's less hangover or doubt than readerly transformation: that one book, that one book, that meant so much, that time you read it? Yeah, it ain't all that. Your tastes improved (your younger self really liked Strohs?), or maybe just changed (no kick left, for you, in champagne). Often f...more You read certain books like you down that sixth beer or the oversized slice of cheesecake, so delighted in the moment, but soon thereafter the nagging doubt: "was it worth it? was it really all that?" Or maybe there's less hangover or doubt than readerly transformation: that one book, that one book, that meant so much, that time you read it? Yeah, it ain't all that. Your tastes improved (your younger self really liked Strohs?), or maybe just changed (no kick left, for you, in champagne). Often for me, re-reading can be an extended act of self-recrimination, a painful engagement with the limits of my own judgment.

Yeah. Egan's book is not one of those.

I picked up Look at Me with trepidation, lo these 8 years after my initial outsized appreciation, and it is even more dazzling, more prescient, more powerful, funnier, more furiously alive and enlivening. Egan had the misfortune to publish this a scant week after 9/11, and a few months after Jonathan Franzen began busily seducing critics (and dissing Oprah) and generally chest-beating as the newly-appointed 800-lb. gorilla of contemporary American fiction. Laura Miller, in Salon, after raving about Egan's novel, published a very interesting interview which underscored such contextual noise, and this sent me hurriedly to the local bookstore. And then... well, see above. Drunkenness ensued, and I was in love.

(I had felt the same about Franzen. But, while I still find The Corrections brutally funny, it reads as far less capacious, far more constipated in its vision, than I'd recalled. Whereas Egan's novel seems to open up on so many threads of contemporary life, seems some time on so in touch with the things that mattered in this last decade.)

It is a novel concerned with appearances, yes, and the deceptive distances between perceptions and truths. It is a novel where a character has gone half-mad at our displacement from material history, driven to furious distraction by the way we have lost touch with things, can only engage with ideas, the brisk whir of Information decontextualizing, dehumanizing. But it is also a novel embedded in material contexts, in the busy messy day-to-day confusions of desire and need and human relationships; even as it reaches for big Ideas, it remains beautifully grounded in its study of these characters. And vice versa. (When George Eliot gets a little hat-tip in the novel, I thought, this second time, that it's no stretch to see Egan not just a fan but a peer to that great writer.)

And it is a novel of lovely surfaces, too--Egan's prose often beautiful, funny, perfect. When one of the protagonists engages with a p.r. agent about marketing her new life, she finds herself annoyed by the obsequious French cultural-studies scholar "scribbl[ing:] madly" after each comment, "his catcher's mitt face" receiving the different possible 'pitches' for her life-story: "first pity, then pity; now pity. I felt like kicking him."

This novel is a kick. Almost ten years on, I would say it's one of the best I've ever read.

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Jul 01, 2012 Edan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Stephanie Ford

Recommended to Edan by: Dan Chaon

Re-reading!

***

I am so hot for Jennifer Egan right now. As I read this book (about a whole lot more than a model who gets a new face after a car accident, by the way), I often had to stop and admire the fluidity of Egan's narrative, how she moved in and out of action, in and out of flashback, in and out of a character's head. This book seemed so effortless, yet complicated, and I learned a lot about novel-making from reading it.

There was a chunk of about 60 pages near the end when I suddenly was...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiftyfiftyme, read-while-traveling

In Egan’s second novel, Look at Me, she takes her language and storytelling up several notches from the fairly pedestrian The Invisible Circus.

There are three storylines: a model, an academic and a young girl—all connected by a woman who’s barely in the book. The main story is the most compelling: After a horrific car accident renders Charlotte, a fashion model, all but unrecognizable, she attempts to get her career going again. Charlotte is reminiscent of Ab Fab’s Patsy Stone: a hard-drinking f...more

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Jan 09, 2012 Simon Lipson rated it 3 of 5 stars

A massively over-written novel which would have benefited from a less wordy author and/or a competent editor. Egan never bothers to use one word where sixteen flowery, uber-lyrical, overblown words will do. Convoluted sentences and showy vocabulary add little - indeed, they become nugatory and self-defeating. Odd, really, given the snappiness of Goon Squad (that horrendous, anal Powerpoint nonsense excepted) but perhaps Egan has now learned to refine and streamline her style - or found herself a...more

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May 13, 2013 Tiffany Vaughan rated it 1 of 5 stars

I couldn't wait to finish this book. I just wanted it to end with every turn of the page. Despite the book turning into a perpetual monkey on my back, I was resolute on not giving up on it. It's just not in my genetic make-up to give up and be defeated, even by a densely crap book. Despite the pain, I wanted to keep on reading, not because I wanted to discover what happened, but because I have this 'thing' about half-finished projects, or anything in life, really, and this also goes for books. J...more I couldn't wait to finish this book. I just wanted it to end with every turn of the page. Despite the book turning into a perpetual monkey on my back, I was resolute on not giving up on it. It's just not in my genetic make-up to give up and be defeated, even by a densely crap book. Despite the pain, I wanted to keep on reading, not because I wanted to discover what happened, but because I have this 'thing' about half-finished projects, or anything in life, really, and this also goes for books. Just like my morning exercise sessions, no matter the amount of pain, I was determined to get through it.

So what's so bad about this novel that makes me equate it to gruelling bootcamp sessions? Well, firstly, the entire narrative is simply a laborious stream of descriptive brouhaha. There are several key characters, and although we get a detailed glimpse into their psyche and lives, nothing seems to actually HAPPEN to them. The plot is soporifically slow and even though you constantly wait (very patiently!) for something to happen, it never does, just like a bad B-grade movie. I found that whenever I picked up the novel from where I left off, I had NO idea what had previously occurred, so I had to turn back and skim over a couple of past pages just to get the gist of what was going on. Taking out my bookmark and picking up from where I'd finished felt like a monotonous chore. I willed for a bonfire to be lit, just so I could aim the book right into it. Surprisingly, when there was a sudden squirt of action, I found I had NO empathy for the character/s, feeling nothing but indifference towards them. It's rare that I read a book and feel soulless as a result. With 'Look at Me' I didn't feel anything at all - only relief that I had turned another page and was that much closer to the end.

Overall, this novel is 514 pages of self-indulgent artistic sculpturing. The only thing going for the pretentious prose (and to which I give kudos for) is that it is extremely articulate. But well-written? Well, it certainly didn't grab, nor sustain, my immediate attention, and the characters were woefully wooden and two-dimensional, so I would have to say no.

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Feb 28, 2008 Becca rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sara - I'd like to know what she thinks of it!

I won't dispute that Jennifer Egan is a skilled writer - it is evident in LOOK AT ME. For me, though, this story lacked storytelling. I often struggle with books that are told from multiple points of view - mostly because I grow very invested in some characters, and read impatiently when they are not the story's focus (read: I do not like/care about the others). In this book, I didn't find my surrogate - the young Charlotte - until the second half, and, until then, I felt trapped in the book. I...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Amy Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, fiction

Our book club usually meets at a restaurant, but one of our members is a newly minted Mary Kay rep (ask me about my eyeliner!) so we decided to meet at a member's house and have a combined meeting/Mary Kay presentation. In the spirit of beauty and identity and over-thinking everything, we decided to read a book which discussed those issues, so I asked Goodreads to recommend something, and this book is what it (you? we?) came up with.

I'm sure there is a great novel out there which deals with issu...more

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Jun 28, 2008 Charles rated it 5 of 5 stars

Egan's lyric and poetic storytelling style immediately captured me, as did the compelling voice of protagonist Charlotte Swenson, who narrates several chapters of this novel throughout her convalescence from the horrifying car accident that opens the book. Along with Charlotte, Egan amasses an interesting cast of characters, each of them exploring how they construct their identities.

It was a fairly quick read that I couldn't easily put down. There is an interesting commentary on technology and c...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jun 16, 2009 Amber added it

Shelves: started-but-decided-not-to-finish

I definitely have read at least part of this book before, and it's frustrating because I can't quite remember what happens, and whenever I put it down I get distracted and can't quite remember where I was but it all sounds familiar and at this point, it's just not worth it anymore. I have lots of wonderful books to read, and this isn't one I want to struggle to maybe finish if I have already read and didn't care enough to remember or if I still can't finish it at this point.....I have to drag my...more

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May 14, 2013 Faith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2-star

This was one of those books that you forced yourself to finish. And after reading it you'de be like "What the hell was that?"

I didn't click with any of those characters. I personally found Moose and Z to be quite annoying people, people whom you're reading about yet they make absolute no sense. And Moose's bloody vision? I am yet top still discover it. Charlotte and her mother Ellen were despicable, one is having an affair while her poor husband is worried about her, well that's the only point I...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Emily Green rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me was a genuine pleasure to read. Her writing style is smooth, and her sentences grace the page with their presence. Her characters are despicable and innocent at the same time, exciting and hopeless. Their fates are inevitable and yet surprising.

In Look at Me, Charlotte, a model by trade, must redefine herself and her life after a disfiguring car accident. She finds that no one she knows knows her anymore, and she ends up inexplicably tied to a private detective and ne...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Pamela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jennifer Egan has got to be one of the most ambitious writers of fiction working today. I loved both The Keep and A Visit From the Goon Squad, and I'd been looking forward to Look at Me for a good while. Finally I gave myself the gift of time with it.

The themes Egan deals with here are dynamite: our hyper-visual culture, the blurred dichotomy between a person's "inside" and "outside," double and triple lives, mutable identities, identities that crumble due to madness. She's intuited the connect...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Justin Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Ever wanted to read a philosophical novel with all the philosophy taken out? Here's your beast. I'd thought, since she's been in the news for a recent novel, that Egan was alive and well, but this novel makes it quite obvious that she died sometime around 1914, and is in fact a Victorian novelist disguised as our contemporary. Why is it obvious?

* slightly poetic but otherwise totally banal prose style.
* huge numbers of plots that never actually get joined together.
* fascination with characters,...more Ever wanted to read a philosophical novel with all the philosophy taken out? Here's your beast. I'd thought, since she's been in the news for a recent novel, that Egan was alive and well, but this novel makes it quite obvious that she died sometime around 1914, and is in fact a Victorian novelist disguised as our contemporary. Why is it obvious?

* slightly poetic but otherwise totally banal prose style.
* huge numbers of plots that never actually get joined together.
* fascination with characters, but no way of actually distinguishing them other than altering their ages and genders (i.e., they all sound exactly the same).
* at least twice as long as it should have been.
* obsession with social and intellectual issues, but in a purely personal manner that, ironically, never does much more than skim the surface of said issues.
* silly ideas about seeing people's 'true selves.'

Yes: this is a Victorian novel, written about what we think of as a uniquely twentieth century problem, the obsession with images and appearances.

More specifically, for the first 100 pages, the first-person narrative of Charlotte the model is really boring, and the third person narrative of Charlotte the young girl is great. For the next 300 pages, this is so completely inverted that I almost skipped whole chapters to get back to the actual story, as young Charlotte's plot blossomed out into a whole bunch of useless, shit flowers (her brother has cancer! her uncle is crazy! her friends are teenagers!). Yes, there's all sorts of neat, foreheadsmackingly obvious parallels between the Charlottes (they both relate to people only through sex! they both live/d in Rockford! they know some of the same people! they both alter their appearance! they're both involved with a man who might be a terrorist but actually appears to have decided to direct movies instead!), but otherwise there's no connection between them. In other words: one story, told twice. Not fun.

The breathless praise this book received suggests that people really like reading about things that are just about to happen, and that's fair. But I was deeply disappointed: this could have been a monster. As it is, it's period piece, but one that makes me think I ought to keep reading her novels, because she clearly *could* write the monster. (less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Rob rated it 1 of 5 stars

I wish I had given up on this book at the halfway point. I kept waiting for something to happen. . .something that I cared about. . . but nothing ever did. I found the book overly dramatic and I didn't care about any of the drama. I didn't care about any character in the book and had no way to relate to them. The characters I cared most about were not really in the story, i.e., Anthony Halladay's estranged wife, maybe even Halladay himself, the students Moose terrorized at Yale, the Korean child...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Susie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jennifer Egan is an extremely talented writer, and I read this eagerly and had some difficulty putting it down. She weaves a great story and her writing is, for me, very post-modern and kind of Franzen-esque (is that insulting? Maybe I should say his work is Egan-esque). She also does teenagers really, really well, both in this book and in A Visit From the Goon Squad. My only hesitation about this book, though I guess this is a biggy, is that besides the teenage character I found most of the oth...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Andrea Mullarkey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: droid

Charlotte was a 35-year-old fashion model until a car accident smashed every bone in her face. As devastating as this accident was for her career, it left her otherwise basically uninjured. But her whole sense of self was wrapped in her identity as a model and so she was forced to face who she was before running away to New York and who she might be again after the end of her career.

Meanwhile another Charlotte, the 16-year-old daughter of model Charlotte’s best friend from high school, is experi...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

“Look at me” is an eerie book. It’s partly a character story, detailing the various lives of Charlotte #1, Charlotte #2, Uncle Moose and “Z”. These characters are not likeable. Charlotte #1, the beautiful New York model who has had an extreme accident that disfigures her face, is disillusioned, depressed, and uncaring - of herself and others. Uncle Moose is a also a strange bird: he was Mr. All Round Most Popular in highschool, then went through a variety of phases showing his developing mental...more “Look at me” is an eerie book. It’s partly a character story, detailing the various lives of Charlotte #1, Charlotte #2, Uncle Moose and “Z”. These characters are not likeable. Charlotte #1, the beautiful New York model who has had an extreme accident that disfigures her face, is disillusioned, depressed, and uncaring - of herself and others. Uncle Moose is a also a strange bird: he was Mr. All Round Most Popular in highschool, then went through a variety of phases showing his developing mental illness. “Z” is a mysterious figure. I don’t want to say much about him so as not to spoil the book. I will say that he is yet another strange bird.

What do three strange and relatively dislikeable characters do to a book? Do we lose interest?

I didn’t. I found “Look at me” a good read. I admit that I skipped over bits and pieces when Uncle Moose was in his various delusional states. Egan plays with the madman as soothsayer idea, and it works, but I found some of his self-reflections a bit dull.

Charlotte #2 is the most likeable one in the tale. She’s searching and adolescent, unsure of herself and looking for meaning. But somehow, I was not drawn deeply into her story. She’s not completely mixed up like the other three, but she didn’t interest me that much, either.

I think the book’s strength is its presentation of aloneness. There are certain meeting points between the characters - Charlotte 1 and 2 have two unsatisfactory meetings - Uncle Moose and Charlotte 2 meet but don’t communicate. Egan makes it quite clear that these people are alone.
They don’t have a spiritual connection with those around them or any kind of spirituality. They’ve bought into the materialist conspiracy that Z is so interested in. None of them is evil or culpable. But none of them is very good.

With this kind of book, there can be no “nice” ending. Can we believe that any of the characters move on, find an identity outside of what is created for them by an image conscious culture. In Egan’s world, I think that the answer is only maybe.(less)

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Jun 06, 2012 Nic rated it 2 of 5 stars

After loving Visit From the Good Squad, I wanted more Jennifer Egan. Look at Me has some compelling characters, some vivid scenes that you've never read before, and some good conflicts. But it felt cumbersome, even repetitive at times, and she introduced many threads that were left untied. It didn't have that satisfying endgame, though you sensed she was trying but had bit off either too small a theme, or more than she could chew. Also, it was one of those books that gets depressing as it goes,...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Max rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kindle "daily deals" are dangerous. Given the rate at which I buy them, I am destined never to read them all in my lifetime.

Here's one I did just finish reading. Jennifer Egan recently garnered praise for her novelAVisit from the Goon Squad. I guess this is why I had the chance to download this previous offering of hers, recently republished having been written back in the 90s, and thus offer up this review.

Look at Me is certainly ambitious in scope, with the stories of 4 main characters and a p

...more

Kindle "daily deals" are dangerous. Given the rate at which I buy them, I am destined never to read them all in my lifetime.

Here's one I did just finish reading. Jennifer Egan recently garnered praise for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. I guess this is why I had the chance to download this previous offering of hers, recently republished having been written back in the 90s, and thus offer up this review.

Look at Me is certainly ambitious in scope, with the stories of 4 main characters and a plethora of equally well realised peripheral ones intertwining in a complex web of connections all centring around common themes.

The most developed character is Charlotte, a 35/28 year old New York model whose mysterious car crash plays out in the opening pages. She has to undergo extensive reconstructive surgery on her face, and it is her recollections during her convalescence in her hometown of Rockford, Illinois, that sow the seeds for other story arcs.

We are introduced to Moose, the handsome and popular teenager from Charlotte's past who has had an epiphany which has driven him into a state of reclusive madness as he tries to spread his visions of descending dystopia.

There is Moose's niece, another Charlotte, who seems destined to be unpopular at school having missed out on receiving any of her family's beauty genes (which all went to her little brother Ricky, along with the Leukaemia and the lion's share of their parent's love).

Finally we meet the mysterious "Z" / Michael West / Aziz, who comes and goes through everybody's story but whose internal thoughts reveal him to be as confused about his identity as the reader is.

All the fireworks play out around Charlotte (the 1st), who remains convinced that she is completely in control even as she spirals into drink and depression through a series of calamitous attempts to rekindle parts of her old life with a new face. When she is approached by a dot com start-up wanting to make her real (larger-than-life, reinvented, ghost-written) story part of an online subscription service, her prayers seem to be answered as she struggles to find reasons to object on principle.

Watching Charlotte flounder through this new stage in her life is akin to watching a ball bounce and tumble through a pinball machine, convinced it has a say in the path it cuts. It is her internal dialogues and the brilliantly observed characters who push and pull her about1 that provide the novel's most delicious and hilarious moments.

Moose, meanwhile, sets the metaphorical background for her follies with his constant musings on how our lives lose all sense of context the more we obsess about looking at ourselves. It is in searching for this context that he turns to meticulously studying the history of Rockford in the hopes of enlightening the world to its deeper meaning and pass on his dystopian vision of a world built solely from "personal histories" and bereft of "real stuff". His would-be students quickly tire of his persistent lecturing, and I was sometimes similarly inclined, but ironically he does end up putting Charlotte's story in context.

And Charlotte (the 2nd)? She latches on to her uncle Moose to fill some void in her solitary, private life, but interprets his musings very differently in her struggle to seek affection which leads to some cringe-worthy misunderstandings. We witness the tension pulse in her family unit amongst the ripples left as her beautiful younger brother nears remission from Leukaemia and bounds from strength to strength too fast for some to keep up.

Clearly, Look at Me is a vast, complicated piece with a lot to say. I've barely mentioned the mysterious "Z" / Michael West / Aziz, who harbours aspirations of being a terrorist while assuming roles in the lives of everybody else. Note that this was written before 9/11 changed the world forever, and it is hard now to consider the character's desire to make more of an impact than the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in quite the same light. However, it was also written long before reality TV and social media took off in the way they have, and I would not be the first to credit Egan with being well ahead of her time with the sharp observations and predictions she makes in this book.

It is most definitely a page-turner, incredibly funny and astute. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Look at Me to anybody looking for something to ponder over the Easter Break. However, I just can't shake the feeling that, while many good points are made very cleverly, the book might just be too vast, too ambitious, too clever to form a completely satisfying whole.2

___________________________________

1. viz. Oscar, her oh so fabulous agent, darling; Anthony Halliday, the private investigator, 7 months off the booze, straight out of a hardboiled crime novel and apparently interested in her connections to "Z"; or Irene Maitlock, the reluctant reporter who Charlotte ropes in to write her new life in the social media and then ends up struggling to control; to name but a few.

2. cf. This review.

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Mar 09, 2012 Rod rated it 5 of 5 stars

The main character in this book is Charlotte Swenson, who undergoes extensive facial surgery after a car crash. Despite the skill of her surgeons she does not look quite the same as she did, with the result that people who knew her before the accident now fail to recognise her. Given that Charlotte is a model this is difficult to adapt to.

The accident couldn’t have happened to a better person since Charlotte was already given to trying to penetrate the masks that others present to the world and...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Kathleen Maguire rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this when it first came out in late 2001, before "friend" became a verb, and I remember really liking it. I grabbed it off my bookshelf recently for the sole reason that I didn't want to read my Kindle in the bath and it was the nearest book to where I was standing at the time. But wow. Reading it now that "friend" HAS become a verb and the entire issue of identity has been complicated, confiscated, and mutilated, this book is eerily prescient.

An ex-model is disfigured in an accident, an...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Jen Egan added it

Jennifer Egan, my doppelganger in the literary field is hands down my favorite author. She is incredibly insightful and beautifully (sometimes hauntingly) articulate. Having just won the Pulitzer Prize for Goon Squad I am constantly reminded of her talent (being complimented and congratulated by people who recognize the name).

She can move across any topic or character with incredible ease and grace. I have gotten lost in her books for hours on end and had separation anxiety after having to put...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading the quick summation of Look at Me, (After a model suffers disfiguring accident she is forced to have surgery which changes her face drastically enough to change her identity.), I expected a reasonably interesting story about a model going through life in New York adjusting to her new face and how it affected everyone around her. Which, I thought might be pretty good. Hey, that's why I read the book! The book goes further. There's a little bit of that, but, it's more of an examination of...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a complex story of image and identity with a hearty dash of anger. I went through phases while reading it - first just mild intrigue, then love and the need to consume the book, then mild boredom toward the end. I do think it's a great story worth checking out, and the complexity is admirable on Egan's behalf, but I think she falls one notch short on the examination of identity. Further, there is so much energy and emotion throughout the story that the points where it sort of floats alon...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved how the author took several characters stories and slowly wove them together like a French braid. I enjoyed the different facets of the theme of how humans see the world, and see women. But I had a difficult time with many of the characters.

The book is written in both first person and third. Charlotte Swenson takes first person. She’s an aging model- well, aging by the standards of the fashion world. She’s thirty five, but claims to be 28. She’s sp...more I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved how the author took several characters stories and slowly wove them together like a French braid. I enjoyed the different facets of the theme of how humans see the world, and see women. But I had a difficult time with many of the characters.

The book is written in both first person and third. Charlotte Swenson takes first person. She’s an aging model- well, aging by the standards of the fashion world. She’s thirty five, but claims to be 28. She’s spent her whole life wanting to have people look at her. Now she’s had a terrible auto accident that crushed her face. She has 80 titanium screws holding her facial bones together now, and it’s funny- no one recognizes her, even people she’s known for years. She thinks it’s because her face has been rearranged, but as she tries to get modeling work she finds that it’s worse than that- she’s gotten too old to be a model, especially since she never really hit the big time. She is now invisible to the fashion and media world, as older women frequently are. But it was pretty hard for me to care much, because Charlotte is fairly obnoxious and self absorbed.

The stories of the other characters are all told in third person. Teen aged Charlotte, the daughter of older Charlotte’s best childhood friend, is trying to get seen clearly by people rather than being seen through the lens of a lying boy. A college professor is trying to get a student, any student, to see the world clearly. A terrorist assimilates himself so well in a dozen different places, blending in perfectly as if he’s bending light around himself. A teenage boy who had cancer wants to be seen as a teenage boy, not a boy with cancer. Celebrities are seen as interchangeable in the end.

It’s a great theme- I loved how Egan explored so many different aspects of the theme- and it’s mostly done very well, albeit a bit slow in some spots. I was a little disappointed with the ending- it was all building up to one heck of a climax and I thought that all the strands would come together there, but I was let down a bit. But not disappointed enough to not recommend this book pretty highly.
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Nov 09, 2011 Becca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Look at Me is a book about a girl name Charlotte who is a model. Unfortunately Charlotte gets into a huge car crash which ultimately destroys her face completely. To our surprise Jennifer Egan actually creates 2 Charlotte in the book. 1 Charlotte is 35 years old and the other 16 year old. Charlotte (35 year old) is returning to New York after that horrible accident. When she gets back she realizes that life is not the same. In fact her so call "friends" ignore her completely or can't recognize...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Jessie Young rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book because both of my roommates love Jennifer Egan's writing and I trust their judgment. I also read this book because I left my hotel on one beautiful weekend morning this fall without a book and when I came to Washington Square park and sat on a bench in the sun I decided the day was too nice not to get in some good reading, so I walked to the closest B&N and bought a book. It happened to be this one.

I think that I will read more Jennifer Egan. The plot of this book always ke...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Shayna Krishnasamy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love the way Jennifer Egan writes. I once said I would probably read and enjoy anything she wrote, because even if the plot bored me to death, the writing would see me through. Having read Look at Me, I'm not entirely sure that statement still stands.

It took me forever to finish this book, a sure sign I wasn't enjoying it. I lost interest in Moose and Michael West's story lines about halfway through the book. And when the older Charlotte started that whole online blog thing, I started losing i...more

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About Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and St John's College, Cambridge.

She is the author of three novels, The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the bestselling The Keep, and a short story collection, Emerald City. She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and...more

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Quotes from Look at Me

“We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.” — 12 people liked it

“At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.” — 8 people liked it

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