Look at Me - Softcover

Jennifer Egan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780330995 ISBN 13: 9781780330990

Publisher: Corsair, 2011

Synopsis

At the start of this edgy and ambitiously multilayered novel, 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.

About this title

Review:

...a comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written exploration of the American obsession with self-invention. (New Yorker)

Brilliantly unnerving. . . . A haunting, sharp, splendidly articulate novel. (The New York Times)

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)

Ambitious, swiftly paced. . . . Egan writes with such shimmering élan that it?s easy to follow her cast on its journey. (The Wall Street Journal)

Dark, hugely ambitious. . . . As riveting as a roadside wreck and noxiously, scathingly funny. (Elle)

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)

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 satisfying click. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Enjoyable and promising. (Financial Times)

After the success of Egan's 2011 Pulitzer-winning A Visit From The Goon Squad, this satire of identity and fame in modern culture is another wildly inventive and meticulously crafted piece of brilliance. (Stylist)

Sharp, clever, complex... I can't do this 514-page novel justice in 242 words. It's funny and serious, dry, sly and wry. The writing is as pin-sharp as the perceptions. Read it. (Independent on Sunday)

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Corsair
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1780330995
• ISBN 13: 9781780330990
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416