‘Look at Me’ by Jennifer Egan

It pains me to think that Jennifer Egan's Look at Me has been right under my nose, on a freestanding display table in the middle of the local Waterstone's, for the past few months without my stopping to pick it up and look at it. But better late than never as they say - I finally bought myself a copy a week ago.

First published in 2001, Look at Me is the second full-length novel by Penn and Cambridge-educated American author Jennifer Egan, and it is a work that is as remarkable as it is difficult to define or classify. While back cover blurbs are rarely reflective of the novel within, the synopsis on the back jacket of Look at Me is especially reductive. Then again, how is one supposed to do justice to 514 pages as ambitious as these when working within a word limit? Hell, all I can do is try...

Following a catastrophic car crash in her native Illinois, Manhattan-based model Charlotte Swenson is forced to undergo extensive facial surgery, including having eighty titanium screws inserted into her head. Following this series of reconstructive procedures Charlotte looks nothing like her old self and is suddenly unrecognisable among what were once her closest friends. As she recovers from her extensive injuries and tries to reconcile the face in the mirror with her own, her story entwines with that of a young Midwestern malcontent, also named Charlotte. And yes, while this is a not-bad summation of the book's key plot points, it is still a poor reflection of an endlessly innovative and imaginative novel.

From reading the brief blurb I expected a scathing satire of the modelling world and its myriad superficialities, perhaps something in the vein of Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. And while Look at Me is particularly concerned with the world in which one's image is oneself, it certainly does not end there. In addition to being a bold study of contemporary Western culture and its many incongruities, Egan's story is also eerily prophetic. Her descriptions of terrorist activity and the proliferation of web-based social networking platforms demonstrate an Orwellian kind of clairvoyance. These predictions are made all the more unnerving by the fact that the book was finished in January 2001, months before 9/11, and long before Zuckerberg made his, er, mark.

Look at Me is truly an outstanding novel, one of the best I've read in a long time, and it covers a lot of ground in prose of the highest quality. I enjoyed Egan's writing so much that I will shortly be purchasing her 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning work A Visit From the Goon Squad, perhaps even as early as tomorrow! If you haven't read Look at Me yet, be sure to read it next.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in January 2012.