Rating: 
Summary: A sizzle that eventually fizzles
Review: Almost all of the press for LOOK AT ME describes the novel as "ambitious," and that it is, but I'm wondering if Egan could have scaled the novel down slightly, she might have had a more compelling and important story. As it stands, Egan opens plenty of cans of worms but doesn't hook much of a fish for her efforts. Overall, I found the book to be a bit plodding and distracting. Once one story line got warmed up, it was soon abandoned for another. Egan's shifting narrative focus, although ambitious, resulted in me not connecting very deeply with any of the characters. There were various points throughout the novel where I was about ready to call it quits, but then Egan would dangle another morsel of insight to keep me around for just a few more chapters. I trust her as a writer with voice. The morsels are good, but the overall experience is not.
I'm glad I read it but would hope for a less "ambitious" novel from Egan next time around--perhaps giving up some of the intrigue of plot for the sake of insight into character.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise, too many irrelevant twists
Review: As other reviewers have noted, the premise for this book will draw you in. As I read it, however, I kept asking myself, Why is this has-been model's story all that exceptional since it sounds like her career was over anyway? This Internet venture is not believable! What was the point of the Anthony Halliday and Irene Maitlock characters-who get quite a bit of page time? Why even write about Ricky's cancer and his experience with the older skate kids? Why bother with Pluto the homeless man? These characters are all interesting, but in the end seem just a distracting tangent from the main story. I was waiting patiently for something to come together up until the last page of the book. As the stories seemed to want to converge, their connections were left undiscovered and the story seemed unfinished. terrible. I was disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time
Review: I picked this book up around 6:30 or 7:00pm and could not stop until I was finished. A fascinating novel about beauty, identity and the way that society sees both. The story begins with Charlotte Swenson, a woman who left her small-town USA home to become a big city model. When returning to her hometown (the first time in a number of years) she has a horrific car accident that nearly kills her. She is badly injured and requires reconstructive surgery to put her face back together. After 80 titanium screws are put into Charlotte's face, and numerous surgeries and treatments later, she begins to realize how her life has changed, and how things will never be the same. She returns to New York and is not recognized by her closest friends. She no longer can find work as an aging and drastically changed model. The whole concept of how beauty affected her work and her social status really intrigued me and kept me reading. Charlotte herself begins to view people differently, with their true intentions, their "shadow self" as she terms it. There are many interesting side stories that tie into the larger cohesive novel. Egan did a great job tying the stories together with the themes of identity and societal norms. I found the Author's Afterword particularly interesting, and it helped me see the larger picture. Very interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing after reading author's earlier works
Review: I thought I'd try this novel after reading Egan's collection "Emerald City," which had some wonderful short stories in it. The book begins with the life of a model after a tragic accident and reconstructive surgery, an interesting premise, then begins to get confusing as it gets interleaved with the life of a teenager somehow loosely connected to the model. I stuck with this, hoping for beautiful language or reasonable leads as to where the story was going, but it only got more and more confusing to me, and began taking on the elements of a mystery or detective piece, a much different path than both how the story began and what I was expecting after reading the author's other work. I'm sure others will disagree, but I don't like big changes like this. If I invest in reading 200 pages, I would expect the latter 200 to follow suit and deliver in a contemporary style consistently, and regrettably I didn't find it here. A novel that this one seems to try to rival would be Nicholas Christopher's "A Trip to the Stars," however in that one, we know right away what's in store for us, whereas in this one I think readers will struggle too hard to try to keep up.
Rating: 
Summary: Prescient
Review: I would hate to be Jennifer Egan at the start of writing her third novel, because her second novel, Look at Me, will be a tough act to follow. Beautifully written and crafted, with a fugue-like structure, Egan shows how individual lives collide with history in unpredictable ways. Her main character, Charlotte Swenson, is a model from the mid-west who has her face surgically reconstructed after a devastating car accident that takes place during a visit to her despised home town. Charlotte's desperate but cynical repositioning of herself within New York's fashion world draws an incisive portrait of the workings of celebrity culture. Charlotte decides to sell her identity to a new web site, in the course of her personal re-launch. Similarly, a mysteriously missing acquaintance of Charlotte's discard his old identity, and creates himself anew in Charlotte's home town. Egan skillfully links this fluidity of identity with values underlying the larger popular culture, and makes credible the kind of passionate ideological response to popular culture that leads to terrible acts of violence. Like I said, prescient.
Rating:
Summary: A sizzle that eventually fizzles
Review: Initially, I found the plot to be unique and inviting. The first part of the book was pretty interesting and somewhat of a page turner. However, towards the end, I found it very hard to finish the novel. I think it was probably due to the lack of character development towards the end. This, ultimately, gave way for a pretty weak ending.
Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant sendup of the culture of display
Review: Jennifer Egan's "Look at Me" is the story of Charlotte Swenson,an already fading, not-as-successful-as-she-might-have been fashion model whose face is destroyed in a car accident. Her new face (held together by 80 titanium screws) allows her to forge a new identity. Initially, Charlotte has little to recommend her. She is not especially brave but is interested in making enough money so that she can continue to live in Manhattan. Egan also follows the stories of Charlotte Hauser, Charlotte Swenson's namesake, a fascinating but plain teenage girl,Z, a terrorist who is appalled to find that the anger that keeps him going is being sapped by his immersion in American culture, Moose, a sweet but unstable collge professor,and a private detective whose career as an assistant DA was cut short because of his drinking. Egan manages to weave these stories together and her prose is frequently wonderful.
The best parts of the novel are Egan's send ups of the American culture of display. Charlotte has a chance to revive her career but only if she lets a fashion photographer cut her face. Charlotte gives up this opportunity but agrees to become part of an project in which she sells her identity to an online company.
The ways in which an academic hungry for money and the online producer "shape" Charlotte's story in order to make it appealing
to an audience makes for some grim hilarity.
The novel isn't perfect, but as a sort of 21st century comedy of manners,it's well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: A Well Done and Ambitious Novel
Review: Jennifer Egan's terrific new novel, Look at Me, appears almost deceptively simple at first. Beautiful NY model loses face in car crash and struggles to regain her life. It's a interesting premise, but Egan certainly doesn't stop there. She explores the superficiality of our contemporary culture and its bizarre obsessions with a well done, insightful narrative. Charlotte, the model with the new face is not a supermodel, but a fairly successful, very smart, mid-30s woman who has seen it all, and thus sees much of what she sees for what it is. Charlotte's descriptions of what she sees in New York are sometimes scarily on target. The details of Charlotte's car accident are somewhat unclear, and to let us know what happened, Egan brings in another Charlotte--this one a teenager (and the daughter of model-Charlotte's high school best friend) seeking answers through her studies with her slightly mentally unstable professor uncle and her affair with a mysterious new high school math teacher. We follow the lives of both Charlottes for the months following the accident. Model Charlotte returns to New York and tries to develop a new life because her old one has essentially vanished with her old face. She becomes involved with a new internet venture--a sort of webcam meets Big Brother meets Real Life meets People magazine (the concept itself is a brilliant, thought-provoking idea on Egan's part). Teenage Charlotte is living in model Charlotte's old home town in the Midwest simply dealing with the difficulties of teenage life--and her involvement with these two older men. Look At Me is a terrific novel, it's only flaw being that sometimes it gets a little too ambitious. It seems at times Egan is trying to communicate a message, but hasn't come up with a concrete way of communicating it. This, however, does not distract from the wonderful and thought provoking story this novel tells. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Rich novel that keeps surprising the reader
Review: Look at Me surprised me, and this is something i always appreciate in a novel. The story starts with Charlotte the model having a car accident. Her retrospective view into childhood and adolescence set the tone for the remainder of the book. You learn that Charlotte is not a nice person. In fact, she is a royal bitch. The reasons are unimportant. Soon other characters start entering the book. Charlotte's best friend in high school, Ellen, has a daughter named Charlotte as well (i won't spoil my suspected reason as to why the namesake). This younger Charlotte is very smart and an ugly duckling, and gets drawn to two men, one in a sexual way, and the other in more of a puzzle-solving urge way. And then the story gets very complicated.
Honestly, at first i failed to see the connection between everybody. I started reading this book because it has the "National Book Award Finalist" seal on the front, but after a while i had to wonder what was so great about it. I kept feeling annoyed at what i judged to be very convenient coincidences along the plot. Then everything became clear, and i understood how all the pieces fell together.
Some of the things i really enjoyed about the book:
*The Shadow Self theory by Charlotte the model
*The mirror room
*General commentary on how we are a society driven by image and consumism
*The huge cast of characters and how everybody fits well within the plot
*The misunderstandings between Moose and Charlotte the teenager
*The clairvoyance regarding Z's role in the US. Jennifer Egan has an afterword in which she explains the timing of the book. Unbelievable!
Some of the things i did not enjoy:
*Charlotte the teenager speaks and thinks like an adult. Wrong! The scene where she goes to Michael's house to be seduced requires more willing suspension of disbelief than if she had flown there on a donkey.
*Michael is a confusing character, in some ways a little difficult to swallow. Could he truly speak with any accent at all? And he blows it all in order to go write movie scripts? Was this done to keep a perfect balance? After all, Charlotte the model goes from stardom down to Earth. Therefore, a minion must then move from Earth up to the stars? Or is he fighting the revolution from within?
Rating:
Summary: Identity, Meaning, Finding Yourself
Review: Look at Me was far more complex than I expected, but I think the author's obvious eagerness to explore the identities of various characters in the book manifested itself in some very exhaustive yet incomplete ways. For example, Charlotte's relationship with Ellen as well as Ellen's own identity issues are introduced and expounded on in entire chapters but never confronted or resolved but for a predictable encounter in the very last pages of the book. Touching on peripheral character's issues and I thought the ending was way too neat and contained. Overall, I did enjoy the book - some parts, especially the ones that touched on isolation and despair towrads the beginning, are outstanding in their depth and clarity, but I agree with the other readers in that the book falters toward the end and seems contrived.
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