Product Description 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 teenage 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. Review Ambitious, swiftly paced...Egan writes with such shimmering elan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey.-- "The Wall Street Journal"
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"
Dark, hugely ambitious, riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny.-- "Elle"
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"
This is a masterfully plotted, unceasingly dramatic novel whose thrilling and provocative power lies in its hard-edged mirroring of our franchised, online, and wildly decadent world.-- "Booklist (starred review)" About the Author Jennifer Egan is the author of several books of fiction, including A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award; The Keep, a national bestseller; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus, which was adapted into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, McSweeney's, the New York Times Magazine, and many others.
Literature & FictionGenre FictionPsychologicalContemporary
Product Description 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 teenage 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. Review Ambitious, swiftly paced...Egan writes with such shimmering elan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey.-- "The Wall Street Journal"
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"
Dark, hugely ambitious, riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny.-- "Elle"
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"
This is a masterfully plotted, unceasingly dramatic novel whose thrilling and provocative power lies in its hard-edged mirroring of our franchised, online, and wildly decadent world.-- "Booklist (starred review)" About the Author Jennifer Egan is the author of several books of fiction, including A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award; The Keep, a national bestseller; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus, which was adapted into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, McSweeney's, the New York Times Magazine, and many others.
Literature & FictionGenre FictionPsychologicalContemporary