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.
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.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
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.
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.
...a comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written exploration of the American obsession with self-invention.
Ambitious, swiftly paced. . . . Egan writes with such shimmering élan that it?s easy to follow her cast on its journey.
Dark, hugely ambitious. . . . As riveting as a roadside wreck and noxiously, scathingly funny.
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.
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.
Enjoyable and promising.
Brilliantly unnerving. . . . A haunting, sharp, splendidly articulate novel.
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.
A prescient, pre-9/11 study of a society drowning in contrivances.