AUDIOBOOK
About
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.
"Intriguing…An unlikely blend of tabloid luridness and brainy
cultural commentary…The novel's uncanny prescience gives Look at Me a rare urgency."
"Ambitious, swiftly paced…Egan writes with such shimmering élan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey."
"Dark, hugely ambitious, riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny."
"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."
"Comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written…An energetic, unorthodox, quintessentially American vision of America."
"Brilliantly unnerving…A haunting, sharp, splendidly articulate novel."
"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."
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.
"Intriguing…An unlikely blend of tabloid luridness and brainy
cultural commentary…The novel's uncanny prescience gives Look at Me a rare urgency."
"Ambitious, swiftly paced…Egan writes with such shimmering élan that it's easy to follow her cast on its journey."
"Dark, hugely ambitious, riveting as a roadside wreck-and noxiously, scathingly funny."
"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."
"Comic, richly imagined, and stunningly written…An energetic, unorthodox, quintessentially American vision of America."
"Brilliantly unnerving…A haunting, sharp, splendidly articulate novel."
"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."