Look at Me

by Anita Brookner

A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes the
opportunity to share in the joys and pleasures of the lives of a
glittering couple, only to find her hopes of companionship and
happiness shattered. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Classics, Novels, Womens, 20th Century

206 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Anita Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life in 1981. Her most notable novel, her fourth, Hotel du Lac won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. Her novel, The Next Big Thing was longlisted (alongside John Banville's, Shroud) in 2002 for the Man Booker Prize. She published more than 25 works of fiction, notably: Strangers (2009) shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Fraud (1992) and, The Rules of Engagement (2003). She was also the first female to hold a Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at Cambridge University.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brookner is famous for her novels about loneliness. In this story we have a young single woman in her early 30s. Fanny’s life is focused on avoiding loneliness. We’re told she is attractive, but not beautiful. We learn of her lack of self-assertiveness through things like her letting everyone call her Fanny even though she prefers Frances. She's the last person to say "Please don't call me Fanny," so she says nothing.



Like many other Brookner main characters, Fanny is an only child born to older parents, so her prime years were spent caring for them. And like many other Brookner female characters, she lives in her parents' dark old home with the ancient heavy furniture she grew up with.

Fanny works in a medical library and becomes good friends with a doctor and his wife who are, the author tells us, the ‘perfect couple.’ Fanny becomes one of the crowd that follows this couple. She is also friends with a co-worker who has a large family. The co-worker’s brother is in love with Fanny and ‘waiting for her.’ Will Fanny at some point ‘settle' for him?

Fanny writes short stories and occasionally publishes one. She relies on these folks not just for friendship but for material for her stories. Several times the author returns to the theme that Fanny feels that either she is an 'observer' of life who writes about it, OR she is an active participant in a ‘real life of her own.’ When Fanny starts a relationship with a man introduced to her by the woman in the perfect couple, she stops writing.

Will the relationship work out? Or will Fanny settle for her co-worker’s brother? Or will she go it alone? Knowing Brookner’s reputation for ‘bleak’ novels, we suspect that the relationship won’t work out.

It's amazing how many lonely people are in the novel. Other than the perfect couple, and the co-worker friend of Fanny, everyone else seems to be lonely in some way. Fanny inherited her nanny/maid/cook from her parents and Fanny is the nanny’s only friend – in fact, she's just about the only person the nanny ever talks to. The folks who hang out at the medical library are complete loners including an alcoholic woman living by herself in a hotel room. Another library hanger-on is an old male scholar who lives alone. The library director lives with his widowed sister. The man Fanny begins a relationship with lives with his mother.



I enjoy reading Anita Brookner (this is my ninth!) because of how much she tells us about human nature. Brookner was a professor of art history at various British universities including Cambridge.

I read this as a buddy read with Ebba Simone, and as always, I appreciate Ebba's comments and insights.

Brookner (1928-2016) is best known for Hotel du Lac, the 1984 Booker prize winner. Although she published a couple of academic books earlier in her career, Brookner was an amazing late bloomer as a novelist, publishing her first book when she was 53. She then published a novel a year for about the next 25 years.

I’ve enjoyed many other novels by Anita Brookner and below are links to my reviews of them. The two I enjoyed most were Hotel du Lac and Making Things Better. (I gave those two novels a rating of 5; all the others, 4.)

The Bay of Angels

A Friend from England

Hotel du Lac

Making Things Better

Altered States

A Private View

The Debut

Visitors

Dolly

Undue Influence


Photo of London flats from tripadvisor.com
The author from dailymail.co.uk

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting. Even when a frivolous person and so-called friend, Alix, decides to betray our narrator, Frances, the latter is constitutionally incapable of perceiving the underhandedness. Frances hasn’t been prepared for duplicity and dissembling in life, of which Alix is the keenest exemplar. Imagine it, thinking she is among friends, Frances has the audacity to become unspeakably happy with newcomer James before the megalomaniac eye of Alix, whose own marriage to Nick must be seen by all as the highest attainment of connubial bliss. Naturally, she corrupts James. It’s all so goddamned petty. Yet Frances can’t see the evil until it’s far too late. And even after she knows her “friends” are beasts, even after she realizes she is not one of their kind—for she is kind—she remains intoxicated by their dastardly proximity, their cool superiority to others. The novel is moving—especially Frances’s disorienting night journey through the spooky substations of Hyde Park. This is the 3rd of Brookner’s 23 novels. Highly accomplished.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frances Hinton is an introspective woman, 'loyal and well-behaved and uncritical', with aspirations to become a successful writer. She works in a medical research library where she studies her colleagues and makes notes for short stories, perhaps a novel. Her mother has recently passed away, and every evening she returns to a vast, outdated Maida Vale flat where she is attended by the ageing family maid, Nancy. Of indeterminate age herself – she seems to feel both young and old – Frances is chronically lonely, constantly battling to convince herself that she is content, or at least that her stark existence is a choice.

Fortunately, I am not a hysterical person. I am used to being on my own and sometimes I doubt whether I could endure a lot of excitement. This remains an academic question, for I have never yet been tempted in this way. I am very orderly, and Spartan in my habits. I am famous for my control, which has seen me through many crises. By a supreme irony, my control is so great that these crises remain unknown to the rest of the world, and so I am thought to be unfeeling. And of course I never speak of them. That would be intolerable. If I ever suffer loneliness it is because I have settled for the harsh destiny of dealing with these matters by myself.

Until, that is, a carelessly glamorous couple, Dr Nick Fraser and his wife Alix, take an interest in her and involve her in their social life. (Said social life sounds rather dull – they're either going to the same restaurant night after night or watching films at home – but as far as Frances is concerned, she's hit the jackpot.) Alix in particular treats Frances like a child might treat a pet, displaying her to friends, openly mocking her in supposedly affectionate fashion, and forgetting her altogether when she's bored. But it is through her association (one can hardly call it friendship) with the Frasers that Frances meets James Anstey, and the love she has longed for seems, at last, a real possibility.

Naturally, that's not the end of it, but it wouldn't even matter if it was, for Look At Me is, regardless of its plot, at its strongest as a detailed analysis of the fascinating, tragic, endlessly quotable Frances. Her sensitivity is fathomless, yet her forced detachment verges on inhuman. She describes herself as an 'observer' seven times, and by the closing chapters she has reached the point of describing herself in third person. Despite her own situation, she is moved to horror by the loneliness of others, showing little sympathy. 'I hated every reminder that the world was old and shaky... that everyone was, more or less, dying.' In one particularly revealing scene she describes the effect of having seen a group of people in a launderette on Christmas Day. Imagining they have nowhere else to go to find companionship (though there is no evidence that this is really the case), she is aghast, and tells us so in the most melodramatic terms:

[I] saw inside the steamy window three men and one woman, quite well-dressed, reduced to spending their day like this, and finding what company the desperation of others afforded them. I never wanted to see that again... The day was ruined. I could not wait for Nancy to retire to her television, and I even went to my mother's bathroom cabinet and took two of her sleeping pills from the bottle. I did not need them; I simply wanted to kill the day.

Instead, she seeks the company of gilded extroverts like the Frasers – as though their personalities will rub off on her without any effort being made on her part; as though the isolation and dullness of fellow outcasts (such as former library employee Mrs Morpeth, who she visits monthly out of a sense of duty she can never quite banish) might, too, be catching. 'I do not seek out friends so that they will offer consolation: I have a horror of that.' Inevitably, she is an unreliable narrator, and even as Look At Me delves so astutely into Frances' inner life, some details remain obscure. Surrounding her obsession with the Frasers and James is the spectre of what she implies was a devastating love affair. She refers to it repeatedly as 'the time of which I never speak' – a falsehood, as she often narrates its effect on her, but the circumstances are never properly revealed.

As Alix seems cruel and dismissive towards Frances from her first appearance, it's painful to keep reading about the self-abasement Frances engages in to keep hold of her 'friendship'. Yet when Alix rhetorically asks Frances 'it's all self with you, isn't it?' it's hard not to agree. The title, 'look at me', is her constant internal refrain, both a cry for help and an infantile demand for attention. She maintains that she does not love James even as she builds an imagined future around him; insists that she doesn't mind, even likes, Alix's patronising habit of calling her 'Little Orphan Fanny', despite the fact that on the very first page of the book she baldly states 'I do not like to be called Fanny'; tries to play down her adoration of the Frasers by claiming that the time she spends with them is all simply research for her fiction.

There are indicators that the novel is set in the era of its publication, the early 1980s, but they are few and far between: a passing reference to 'horrible shops' selling, among other things, 'video cassettes' is one of the only clues. Otherwise, it could be set in the early 1930s or mid-1950s, and the book it most reminded me of was Claude Houghton's I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930). It, too, concerns a character who has accepted his lot as a lonely, quiet observer, only to find his life transformed when he is inducted into a circle of glamorous friends. Frances, however, lacks the often comic voice of Houghton's narrator (although there are some moments of dry humour – and I found it interesting that she so often insists her own stories are very funny).

Frances is also a clear precursor to the eponymous antiheroine of Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen, and has a similar effect on the reader – she is both heartbreaking and maddening. Like Eileen, Frances wants others to really SEE her, yet does nothing to make this happen; like Eileen, Frances is frustrating and offputting, yet I think many readers will recognise parts of themselves in her. Frances is nowhere near as candid or, frankly, as scatological as Eileen, but the two characters talk so nakedly of their own unhappiness, inner turmoil and longing for more that at some points they could be speaking with one voice. Where Eileen has her inscrutable 'death mask', Frances has her manners:

The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. And some people take your impassivity as a calculated insult, as Alix seemed to be doing now. Still I smiled.

I found Look At Me so devastatingly incisive about loneliness, longing, having an acute awareness of how others see you, and the exquisite pain of dashed hope. It certainly won't be my last Brookner.

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

The worst thing that a man can do to a woman is to make her feel unimportant.

Anita Brookner is a master of analyzing human behaviour. She is brilliant in sketching characters and making them unforgettable. This is the second book I read by her in which the main character has an uncanny resemblance to me in her personality, mannerisms, frame of mind and temperament.

Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten… It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering.

She likes an ordered life. She has a sharp tongue but likes courtesy of manner and paying attention to the existence of other people. Frances is well behaved and observant. She is of a sacrificial disposition. She is discreet, reliable, reasonable and honest and has a sense of honour and she is well aware that these qualities have no value in matters of love and friendship. In a word, she is not interesting enough for someone to care to please her. Why would anyone exert themselves for someone who has so few demands?

I was not a powerful woman, able to bend others to my will, nor was I particularly malleable, and therefore able to bend to the will of others.

When Frances meets the married couple Nick and Alix, she falls in love with their restlessness, cruelty and selfishness; with their love of action, speed and gratification. They soon become an addiction- she craves their company because she is fed up with her own principled lonely life. She wants companionship; she wants to forget and let go of the past.

I was the beggar at their feast, reassuring them by my presence that they were richer than I was. Or indeed could ever hope to be.

But in reality, Alix is a narcissist and Nick, her enchanted sidekick and as is with all narcissists, they are incessantly in search of new devotees.
Will Frances be able to keep up with their whims and demands? Will she wake up and see Alix for what she really is- a self-absorbed egotist? A 'she who must be obeyed'?

It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state ‘I hurt’ or ‘I hate’ or ‘I want’. Or, indeed, ‘Look at me’. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

[ester · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't read any more Anita Brookner. Though lovely, her books are heartbreaking and frustrating in equal measure. I want to shake their sedate, mistreated protagonists and leave them with Betty Friedan in one hand and a vibrator in the other.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten".

Nobody writes about sad, lonely people quite like Anita Brookner. She gets inside their head, we hear their thoughts, and our hearts break right along with theirs as they try and fail to be "normal". Frances, an art library archivist, had parents that adored each other, leaving her feeling as though she were on the outside looking in. They are both dead, leaving her very well off, with a very nice, paid for flat in a very nice neighborhood. She's young, healthy, loves her job, but she's bored, lonely, and can't contemplate the future with any enthusiasm. Then she meets a charismatic couple who include her in their lives, introduce her to new friends, and overnight, things change.

If this is your first Anita Brookner novel, you have hopes for Frances. If not, then you are wary of her newfound happiness. You read for the insights, for the sly humor, which in this book, came from the times Frances states the obvious. Frances describes herself as an observer of life, and eventually puts those observations to use by writing it all down. And maybe, in the end, that is how she gets her revenge.

I chose to end this with a little hope for Frances and her future. Others may see it differently because Brookner has a way of connecting with each reader on a very personal basis. But aren't we all saying "Look At Me" every day, in our own way?

[Marchpane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look at Me leaves behind a splinter in the reader’s mind; the book lingers. The title is a plea from its alienated narrator, a woman seeking connection, fumbling her attempts to break out of her isolation. Frances is an abrasive kind of character, not easy to inhabit, even for this novel’s short length. Look at me, look at me, her very desperation makes you want to recoil from giving her what she craves.

Brookner writes beautifully, in a chilly, formal sort of way that can come across as old-fashioned. I felt certain the novel was set in the 1950s until someone mentioned a microwave. But her psychological insight is timeless and scalpel-sharp. Frances weighs the ‘endless memory’ of being a writer against fully inhabiting the world, observation vs participation. Frances is lonely and sad and emotionally paralysed. It can be uncomfortable to read; that emotional and psychological truth is where the splinter comes in.

Frances, I looked at you—now get out of my head.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state 'I hurt' or 'I hate' or 'I want.' Or, indeed, 'Look at me.' And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

Look at Me was Anita Brookner's third novel, her 4th, Hotel du Lac, winning the Booker, and she would go on to write many more, but was recommended to me (see below) as one of her best, and it certainly is a wonderful work.

It is narrated in the first person by Frances (my name is Frances Hinton and I do not like to be called Fanny), single (and largely assumed by others to be innocent and sexless, but actually with an affair with a married man in her past), parentless, of independent means but working in a medical scholar's library during the day and a writer in her spare time (of which she has too much).

She finds herself attracted into the social orbit of Nick Fraser, one of two Doctor's who frequent the library and his social force-of-nature wife Alix (the first time that I saw Nick and Alix together, I felt as if I was witnessing the vindication of nineteenth century theories of natural selection), who are in many respects her opposite.

People like Nick attract admirers, adherents, followers. They also attract people like me: observers.
...
I find myself respecting [such people], as I would respect some natural phenomenon: a rainbow, a mountain, a sunset. I recognise that they might have no intrinsic merit, and yet I will find myself trying to attract their attention. ‘Look at me,’ I want to say, ‘Look at me.’

Perhaps inevitably, they don't call her Frances:

'Oh, you're an orphan,' she cried, with comic emphasis. 'Darling,' she cried to Nick who had come through the door at that moment, 'she's an orphan! Little Orphan Fanny!' She made it sound as if it should be in capital letters. She made it sound funny and silly, and I felt better about it, and they have called me Fanny or Little Orphan Fanny.

But when they introduce her socially to the other doctor, James, she seems to have found a soulmate:

The worst thing that a man can do to a woman is to make her feel unimportant. James never did that. That whole late autumn, which was exceptionally cold and exceptionally dry, favouring our walks, was for me a time of assurance and comfort and anticipation. There were no images in my head. I did not write. I was happy.

But in the same way that she observes others - including Nick and Alix - as material for her stories and putative novel, Nick and Alix use others as social playthings.

This was an wonderfully written piece and my feelings are best expressed in the word's of the Washington Post's reviewer:

Brookner persistently and (I suspect) deliberately violates one of fiction's allegedly inviolable rules: Show, don't tell. It is, generally, a rule I prefer to see enforced: Let character and theme emerge from plot and event rather than from exposition. Yet Brookner's style of narrative -- reflective, measured, expository -- is, in her hands, exactly right; her prose alone is, quite simply, exquisite.

Reading the novel in 2017-18 it also bought to mind the recent trend for unlikable first-person female loner narrators, highly self-analytical as and yet simultaneously un-self-aware, most notably Helen from the quite brilliant Sorry to Disrupt the Peace and the eponymous Eileen and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. See the discussion on my review of another similar book, albeit with a difference, Flesh of the Peach
by Helen McClory: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

There is a lot in Look at Me to unpack in such a short book and rather than write my own detailed review I would direct anyone towards four sources that do the book more justice than I would ever manage:

The wonderful Mookse & Gripes podcast, a podcast I'm pleased to support on Patron, which first introduced me to Brookner's work:
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/20...

This review from a GR friend Dan, which sealed the deal on reading this particular book:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The most-liked review on Goodreads - which interestingly also makes the link to Eileen
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And this from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this, I found its premise so similar to Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs that I was disconcerted and distracted. Somewhere in its middle, when something different happens, I settled into it. Brookner’s first-person narrator doesn’t ‘rant’ as Messud said in an interview of her character Nora; the former is chillingly controlled, but this too is a cry from the soul, as the rejection and intense loneliness she experiences is realistically and achingly delineated.

In connection to recent literary pursuits of mine, her loneliness had me thinking of E. M. Forster: A Life (mostly in relation to Forster's Maurice); and the name of the narrator --My name is Frances Hinton and I do not like to be called Fanny.-- brought to mind Frances Trollope who was called "Fanny" by a belittling press. Here, it's the couple that befriends the narrator that insists on the diminutive, and worse.

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look at Me is one of those books that's gotten a lot of backchannel buzz. It was published in 1983 but bears the solid literary heft of something a good deal older. The story is straight-forward; no meta, no magic, no flashbacks, no tricks. A simple road through a simple life, which gives it gravity enough to move the soul to dismay.

Frances Hinton is a London woman whose aged mother has recently died. She's been left a substantial amount of money and inherited the large flat they shared. She has not spent the money or altered the flat to a single degree. She makes frequent plans to do so, but her inaction keeps the whole of the estate in perpetual reserve - and Frances herself in limbo. It would be easy to ascribe this paralysis to grief, but Brookner sets the bar much higher. For Frances, it seems, has had difficulty all her life with fitting in, with finding her place, with establishing herself socially. This has doomed her to the role of observer, a circumstance she's tried to work to her advantage by crafting those perceptions into stories. Having lost her mother and audience of one, she has taken the bold step of submitting her material for publication.

In the meantime, she continues to work as a medical librarian. Her duties consist of cataloguing the imagery of madness; famous paintings, sketches and photographs. It's a rote routine of an employment, quiet and safe, until an afternoon one of the doctors happens to stop by with his wife. Frances finds herself deeply affected.

Once I followed a girl in the street simply because she looked so lucky that I could not tear myself away from her. Apart from her youth and her beauty, she had the sort of assurance that promised well for her, as if her expectations were so high, so naturally high, that she had set a standard for herself that others would be encouraged to reach. She seemed to await the best of everything, and I remember staring at her as if she had descended from another planet. Being an observer in these matters does not always help one. Sometimes the scenes and people one observes impart their own message of exclusion. And yet the fascination of the rare perfect example persists, and it demands that one lay down one's pen and stalk it, study it, dissect it, learn it, love it. That was how I felt when I first saw Alix and Nick. I knew that I could never learn enough about them, but also that I might never understand what I learned. Thereafter I watched them with particular care.

Nick and Alix Fraser turn out to be not very nice people. They are the sort of beauties who demand attention and a constant flow of admiration. Frances is more than willing to serve and is soon gathered up for use. The wife is quickly bored, though. She decides to spice things up a bit by introducing her new acolyte to their eligible friend, James. Frances is putty in their hands, and it's wrenching to encounter through her midnight pen as she over-thinks the entire experience of belonging and attraction; imagining she has time to feel her feelings and a certain level of control over how the romance unfolds. She does not, and this is how it is with the selfish, the idle, the narcissistic. Hell, I think, is filled with incredibly attractive people.

A brilliant little novel that nails the experience of trying, with all one's heart, to become someone society might want to know.

[Georgia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering."

I was depressed after rereading this. And that's saying something. I thought I was immune to Brookner.
But I'm at a different stage in my life since I first read her. And now, I want to shake the young woman at the centre of this novel and tell her to seize the day. Life is not short. It is long. Make it good. Take some chances. Dare. Go for it. Leave that library. Get a one way ticket somewhere and leave. You can. Life is good. Go out and find it. Couch surf. Anything. I knew a hostel in Dublin where the northern Irish lived for months (some for years) it cost so little. It may still be running. I met good people there. Go out and find some. And take Olivia in her wheelchair with you if she'll come. She deserves better, too.

[Doug H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d have a lot to say about this one if I were still writing decent reviews in here. Instead, I’ll just say who I would and wouldn’t recommend it to.

I would primarily recommend it to writers and visual artists because they’ll immediately identify with the one-step-removed-from-the-world mental state of the struggling writer narrator, but I’d also recommend it to anyone who generally feels like more of an observer of than an active participant in life. (Hello there, voracious bookworms!) I’d also recommend it to those who like a bit of heaviness and difficulty in their book. “Heaviness” is here in the form of philosophical ponderings on art and literature and also in the story’s themes of misplaced affection, social rejection and deep loneliness. “Difficulty” is here in the author’s Jamesian writing style. (Not quite as difficult as James, but do expect some serpentine syntax that occasionally requires parsing to fully understand.) The author is also highly educated and writes from the viewpoint that her reader is too. She doesn’t pander. I googled and learned.

I would not recommend this to readers who want an easy payoff and a happy ending. Or a happy beginning. Or a happy middle. Personally, I wanted a bit more of the wit that the narrator claimed to be putting into her own novel. I found no wit here at all, but maybe I was reading from a place of too much personal closeness.

This was my first Brookner and it was a bit of a struggle for me both technically and mentally, but I’m definitely a fan. Now I’m off to find my own 5 star Brookner favorite novel. I know it’s out there...

[Jan-Maat]

Somewhere in The Great Gatsby it says of Tom and Daisy, that they were careless people, they smashed things up and left other people to clear up the mess. Change Tom and Daisy for Nick and Alix. Next, instead of Jay Gatsby setting up a house and throwing parties as a way of signalling "look at me, look at me", let's have Frances Hinton thinking to herself "look at me", just as Gatsby is desparate to be seen by those particular people, actually just by the woman, just as Frances is; and that is more or less this book. Less money is involved, no one's nose gets broken, nobody even has has to die, and there is a definite erotic component to Nick and Alix's need to consume theclives of others and to draw admiration.

I discovered this book in France, where in November 1992 it had has been offered up for sale for 62 francs, a bit of a mark up from its original price of 3.99 GBP, but anyway am I here to wonder about the weird wanderings of books around the world?

This is a relatively early Brookner. It is extremely unusual in having some precise time markers- the events take place after the fall of the Shah (the book was published in 1981, so this is Brookner at her most contemporary), which is as it happens, is not apparently relevant to the plot, there is a plot, well more of a plot than I am used to in a Brookner novel, there is a servant, and since reading some Ginzburg short stories some years ago I am on the alert for servants in late twentieth century novels.

Apart from those abominable abnormalities there are standard Brookner features; this is a London novel, not quite as precise as some others but you can still tread in the characters footsteps if you so wish. Frances Hinton is interesting in that she is highly observant but equally never seems to understand the significance of what she sees.

While her mother was alive, she told her little stories about her daily work in the library of a medical research institute, this develops into writing stories, and as the novel progresses Frances plans to write a novel based on her own experiences, but with some slight exaggeration. If the novel "Look at me" is the novel that Frances planned to write, then the whole thing is a kind of mobius strip in which what we read is the fictional account written by a fictional character imagined by Brookner - a double fiction.

It is tempting to see Frances as writer as Brookner herself. For Francis though writing is second best, in fact she wants to be out in restaurants and hotel bars with bold, selfish, confident people, and ideally with a woman discussing hair-styles. Brookner is a savage writer, or at least is in this novel, so she gives Frances exactly what she desires and shows how she is destroyed by tgevoeople that she idolises and never blames them for it, only perhaps herself.

I am also tempted to see the story as Brookner's novel about fascism - Nick is a natural leader of men, he and Alix are appraised by Frances as "the vindication of nineteenth-century theories of natural selection" (p.37), while they both have some hostility to the Jewish and not completely physicaly able Olivia (who refers to the film "the discret charm of the bourgeoisie", bonus points for that display of taste) and I do wonder if we are meant to read Frances as Jewish as well, as Brooker herself was , but perhaps I am over reading.

Alternatively I can see the story as a conflict between the types of mental illness that Frances and Alix represent. Frances as Durer's Melancholia, Alix well maybe she's depressed too she needs to have people round her adoring her, her husband Nick is alert to the need to keep her spirits up. Anyhow what ever is going on internally in Frances and Alix, bringing them together leads to ...typucal Brooknerian symphonic literary developments.

While as with the Mobius strip, there is no clear division between the beginning and the ending - underlined by the repetition of the opening lines, there is change. We see a bizarre invesititure of Frances into her mother's role, which rather suggests no exit from her way of life, just a continual loop. While during the novel we see the potential for change, which I guess Frances does not desire as much as she claims to herself.

Clotbing, again, is very exactly described. I am not sure if this is intended as a marker of wealth or of discernment, or does it intended to signal the narrator's precise precise awareness of how thwy presentvthemselvrs to the world?

Personally I realised reading this that I prefer Brookner's other novels, those with less of a plot than this one, the sensation of being brought before a painting and taught to really pay attention to it until I feel a pain in my heart. This one I feel is not as subtle as others "Look at me" is repeated regularly through the novel, just in case you are in danger of forgetting what Frances desires, while the opening lines are repeating just before the middle, and just before the end, give the sense of arches or a garland, running through the text.

Looking around on the internet, I found part of an interview with Brookner from the Paris Review, Autumn 1987 in which Brookner says that she was not allowed to learn Hebrew as a child because shecwas not considered physically strong enough. I confess I spent sometime daydreaming about Brookner being brought up in the Jewish East End (of London) and developing into some kind of Arnold Wesker. But obviously, like a cat, she trod her own path.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, so long as it is remembered, it will indicate the future. It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering.

Why has it taken me so long to read anything by Anita Brookner? I've been hearing her name come up regularly on the wonderful Backlisted Podcast for years.

A critic once unfavourably, but memorably, referred to the long dark corridor of her fiction. Her reputation is as one who writes of loneliness, disillusion, betrayal, failure etc, and so it proved with Look At Me (1983).

Despite the somewhat downbeat nature of this novel, there is some humour, and a concise, astute and beautifully told story. I was totally engrossed throughout. I found it exhilarating and vivid, even towards the end of the story when things become markedly darker.

Look At Me is very satisfying. A masterpiece. Upon finishing I bought four more Anita Brookner novels which I eagerly anticipate.

5/5

The blurb...
By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, by night she haunts the room of a West London mansion flat. Everything changes, however, when she is adopted by charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix. They draw her into their tight circle of friends. Suddenly, Frances' life is full and ripe with new engagements. But too late, Frances realises that she may be only a play thing, to be picked up and discarded once used. And that just one act in defiance of Alix's wishes could see her lose everything....

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most obvious strength of this novel is the quality of its writing. Brookner does remarkable things with setting, mood, character, and development. She has crafted this with an architect's sense of line, form, and material selection. It is clear why she has a following among avid readers "in the know". In these regards I am deeply impressed.

The story itself is quite circumscribed and - despite the breadth and depth Brookner manages to eke out of it - became tiresome and repetitive, I'm afraid. I did not enjoy the amount of time I was required to spend in the mind of Frances Hinton. I did find more empathy for her once I realized just how damaged she was. Despite that, however, I was not sympathetic to her endless yearning for a more "exciting" life via the influence of Nick and Alix Fraser; people who were equally broken but less stymied than she. These Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald wannabes only added to my irritation.

So: Fabulous writing applied to characters and circumstances I struggled with. My impression is that this is quite representative of Anita Brookner. For me it sent out strong echoes of novels by Muriel Spark and Penelope Lively, both of whom I hope to revisit some day.

3.5 stars

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Old guy with lousy memory remembers plot after thirty-five years" could be the title for these brief comments. I first read Anita Brookner's Look At Me in 1983, shortly after it was initially published. I just reread it and I was surprised how well I remembered it. My remembering Look At Me so well after so many years is a testament to the emotional power of this, Brookner's third novel, rather than a testament to my memory.

Look At Me starts with a great paragraph spoken by Frances Hinton, Brookner's young protagonist: "Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, so long as it is remembered, it will indicate the future. It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering." This acts like a chorus throughout Look At Me. Here's Fran reflecting again towards the end of Look At Me: "For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, once it is remembered, it indicates the future. I realize now that although I sit in this room, growing older, alone, and very sadly, I must live by that knowledge. The telephone may ring, tonight or tomorrow: it no longer matters."

Fran's burden is that she is in fact unable to forget. Here's Fran speaking of James, her current male companion: "he was not a drug, an obsession, like that time of which I never speak. I did not have to strive for his attention, I did not have to abandon everything when he appeared, I did not have to squander all my resources at a sign from him. In fact, after the debasement of that previous time, I experienced with James a renewal of innocence, and I felt more at home with that innocence than with that cynicism of desire and contempt so strangely mingled that I had previously known." Fran unsuccessfully cultivates "the art of forgetting" while trying to cultivate a self-protective role of novelist as observer: "One is, let it be remembered, an observer, an unblinking eye recording what is thought, at the time, to be unremarkable."

But Fran recognizes the limits of her observations: "And his life, his life. . . would go on without me. And I would have no knowledge of it. And since I had apparently understood so little, I could not even blame him. I get things wrong, you see." I found Fran's "I get things wrong, you see" haunting. Remembering Look At Me after about thirty-five years, I can testify that it's unforgettable.

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma coisa, logo que conhecida, jamais poderá ser desconhecida. Apenas poderá ser esquecida. E, na medida em que domina o tempo, enquanto puder ser lembrada, indicará o futuro. É mais prudente, sejam quais forem as circunstâncias, esquecer, cultivar a arte de esquecer. Lembrar é defrontar o inimigo.

“Antes só do que mal acompanhado” é a máxima que melhor se aplica a este livro triste e introspectivo de Anita Brookner, uma autora inglesa que há muito que queria conhecer.
Frances vive numa enorme casa apenas com uma velha empregada, após a morte da sua mãe, e é bibliotecária num instituto de pesquisa médica que se dedica ao estudo do comportamento humano. Não podia ser um ambiente mais propício para esta solitária que sonha em escrever um livro sobre as pessoas bizarras com quem convive. Frances sente-se tão só e aborrecida que, na sua ingenuidade, fica fascinada por um casal que lhe dá umas migalhas de atenção e que lhe parece o cúmulo da mundanidade e sofisticação, mas que não passam claramente de pedantes e poseurs.
Frances acha-se insípida, banal e invisível, mas a sua nobreza de carácter, a compaixão pelos outros solitários com quem se cruza, os dilemas pessoais com que se debate e a capacidade de análise do que a rodeia tornam-na uma personagem muito cativante.

Executei em mim mesma uma espécie de operação cirúrgica, e eliminei todos os sentimentos, exceptuando a capacidade de troçar e de fazer juízos. Registei algures numa zona muito remota do meu cérebro que se tratava de um momento terrível e decisivo, e que poderia nunca mais vir a recuperar todo o meu eu. Mas esse eu parecia-me na altura tão danificado que era simplesmente uma questão de segurança, de sobrevivência, proteger as ruínas, tal como se isolavam, com cordões, certas áreas defeituosas dos passeios.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reflective, character based novel written in the first person. The book is about Francis Hinton. Francis works in a medical research institute library. She is single, in her mid twenties, financially well off, living in a very large apartment with Nancy, a housekeeper who has been with the Hinton family for many years. Francis’s mother died over one year ago. Francis lives a lonely, though very regulated life, having a number of people she regularly meets over any given month. Her job is within walking distance of her apartment. One day she meets Alix, the wife of Nick, a doctor who knows Francis via the institute library. Alix invites Francis to eat with Alix and Nick, and so begins a friendship that has Francis spending a lot of her spare time in the company of Alix and Nick. When James, a doctor who lives with his mother, joins the threesome, Francis’s life becomes more entertaining.

Another very good Brookner novel that her fans should find a satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1983.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a faultless novel. It’s frustrating at times, which in fact keeps you reading, and so elegantly crafted I felt I was reading something from the fifties. I loved it.

[Trudie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first foray into the works of British author Anita Brookner. As someone that follows the Booker prize, I really should have read her 1984 novel Hotel du Lac by now. However, the experience of Look at Me feels like a good primer.

At first glance, this seems like a sedate, impeccably mannered ( and British ) version of books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation , not that anyone is doing drugs or having sex in this novel. But Brookner has to be the preeminent writer of lonely, socially difficult women that view themselves as outsiders or in this case observers of beautiful and frivolous people.
Look at Me is carefully crafted, the author's eye for visual details is apparent especially in her descriptions of fusty furnishings and various artworks. I appreciate now why Brookner has such a following but I also read it with mounting frustration. It is an extraordinarily interior novel, and Frances, the main character, gets herself into situations I feel entirely avoidable with some straight-talking! This says more about my patience for "woebegone female" characters with little agency. And while that description is likely doing Frances a grave disservice, there was a child-like naivety that I think Brookner purposefully played up here that was both interesting and enervating.

It is strange to apply the idea of "overthinking" to a novel but somehow that is the feeling I was left with when I set this book down. Yet this tendency resulted in a quite frank and desolate portrait of the writing process ( Brookner's view of it ) and the cruelties of being invisible in your own life.

Time to try some more Brookner ( thanks Dan for the introduction )

[JacquiWine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perceptive, engrossing and enigmatic, Look at Me – Anita Brookner’s third novel – is something of a minor masterpiece, probing as it does the inner life of a lonely young woman who experiences a brief period of renaissance, only to be scarred by the torrid experience.

The woman in question is Frances Hinton, a spinster who works in the reference library of a medical research institute, organising and cataloguing images of various mental conditions and abnormalities of human behaviour. Highly analytical and orderly by nature, Frances is a keen observer of her colleagues and visitors to the institute, studying and recording her observations as potential material for short stories, or possibly even a novel. In her spare time, of which there is ample, Frances aspires to be a writer, viewing her writing as a means of expression, of reminding other people that she exists. In short, it is her one way of saying: ‘Look at me. Look at me’.

To read the rest of my review, please click here:

https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

I'm not sure I even know what that means, but it must be important because the narrator says it several times. Maybe it's referring to the experience of reading Brookner. I read Hotel du Lac at some dim point in the 80s and I remember not a single thing. Except the gauzy cover. For some reason that stuck.

My friend Gerald who knows everything sent me this book, and hinted that it was autobiographical. I hope he's a little wrong; no one, not even Anita Brookner, should be quite so sad as Frances (little Orphan Fanny) who takes an entire novel to figure out that no one really wants to look at her. The writing is superbly crafted, even when it reads to me like parody. Gerald will have to forgive me for quoting a passage I already sent to him:

There is absolutely no need for me ever again to pretend that everything is all right. It is not, nor was it ever.

I immediately felt weak and pale, not so much decadent as undernourished, unfed by life's more potent forces, condemned to dark rooms, and tiny meals, and an obscure creeping existence which would be appropriate to my enfeebled status and which would allow me gently to decline into extinction.

Indulging a suspicious penchant for masochism, I confess I enjoyed it throughout. Next up is Strangers. But for the moment I think I'll fix a tiny plate of beans on toast and a melancholy cup of tea.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

No quarto capítulo de "Look at Me", quase desisti. Havia detalhe a mais, descrição a mais, e eu sentia que a história se perdia na observação do insignificante. Mas continuei e, sem perceber bem quando, comecei a querer voltar àquele mundo. Um mundo pequeno, contido, quase imóvel. Um terrário de emoções: tudo o que acontece lá dentro está delimitado e, por isso mesmo, seguro.

Anita Brookner constrói o mundo como quem organiza uma casa demasiado silenciosa; cada gesto, cada frase estão no sítio certo; com um ar é espesso, de contenção. Frances Hinton, a narradora, é uma mulher que vive rodeada de outros e, ainda assim, à margem. Observa-os, descreve-os, tenta compreendê-los. É através dessa observação obsessiva que sobrevive à ausência da chamada vida vivida.

O que antes me cansava — o detalhe — acabou por se tornar a própria razão da minha admiração. Brookner não descreve para enfeitar: descreve para existir. O olhar é o corpo da sua personagem. E é por isso que "Look at Me" não é um romance sobre o amor, nem sobre a necessidade de ser visto, mas antes sobre a necessidade de compartilhar o mesmo olhar, a mesma forma de ver o real.

Quando James aparece, parece oferecer a Frances uma promessa de reciprocidade. Ele é o seu acesso ao mundo dos outros, até que, no momento em que ela finalmente se entrega, ele lhe diz: “Contigo não.” Essa recusa não é apenas sexual. É existencial. Não é o corpo dela que ele rejeita, é o seu modo de ver. Brookner atinge aqui uma forma rara de crueldade moral: mostra-nos que a afinidade intelectual ou emocional não garante nada, que a compreensão é um luxo.

No fim, Frances não enlouquece, não se revolta, apenas aceita. E essa aceitação é o que há de mais doloroso: a constatação de que viver entre outros não é o mesmo que partilhar um mundo.

Fechei o livro reconciliado e comovido. Percebi que Brookner escreve para os que olham, os que tentam compreender excessivamente e sentem que o mundo dos outros passa sem se deter, correndo atrás de algo que não reconhecemos.

E talvez seja isso o amor, afinal: encontrar alguém que olhe como nós, para que possa, por fim, olhar para nós.

Publicado no Narrativa X:
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2025/...

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this because a couple of reviews of my third novel, Bitter Orange, said this followed a similar story, and I was intrigued. It is about a lonely woman called Frances (!) who becomes entranced by a glamorous couple who play with her for a while before discarding her. So it does share that similarity but is much more introspective and contemplative. I've only just started reading Brookner, and this wasn't one of my favourites (I much prefer Hotel du Lac, and Family and Friends), but it does still have of course Brookner's wonderful writing. I just would have preferred a bit more to happen.
Probably 3.5 stars.

[Vonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my third book by Anita Brookner. None have come even close to living up to the first, "Hotel Du Lac". "Dolly" suffered from uninteresting characters and a plotless story. "Look At Me" tells the story of a spineless, most infuriating protagonist who lives her life a slave to others.

I hate to seem unempathetic, but I have no respect for those who leave themselves to the mercy of everyone else, to those that they wish to please (which may be everyone they know- and don't know). Frances vaguely tells about her experiences with loneliness- late mother, lost friends, some tragic love lost that she is afraid to mention in detail; afraid she will revisit. She works as an archivist at the library with her best friend Olivia, who wears a neck brace and walks with a hobble, since a car accident years ago. It is here that she meets Nick Fraser, one of the two doctors that work there, and his wife Alix. By all outward appearances, they seem like the perfect couple. Complementing personalities, perfect chemistry, and never fighting, except for playfully. (In my opinion, a complete lie. No couple can be perfect. In fact, studies have shown that, to an extent, the more frequently couples argue and fight, the higher their chances of long-term success. We all know that what goes on behind closed doors is far different than outward appearances.) Alix also has depression.

Unfortunately, all the characters have the abhorring stubbornness of refusing to seek help. Alix will do it under guise, never admitting it. Frances will not at all, under guise or not. This leads to detriment to her life; her silent need to have others approval, especially from the Frasers causes her to completely compromised her own happiness and needs, even if she refuses to admit this to herself in any way. She has convinced herself so much that to her approval from them will actually mean her true happiness. And without it, she can never be happy. She does not exactly love James Ansley, the other doctor working at the library, but as he is a close friend to the couple, she will force herself to seek his romantic interest, in order to have them remain a foursome. Her loneliness runs deep, causing her extreme pain. Yet rather than spending her time looking for all her possible love interests outside her small circle of friends, she continues stubbornly to try to gain their approval.

Another aspect I found incredibly and increasingly irritating was her use of "Look at me". She wants to say it, but feels it would be against her propriety beliefs. She holds it in. But continues to feel it, and say it to the reader.

What saves this book is that as usual Anita Brookner is a masterful writer, especially and characterization. Although it frustrates me to no end, her description of Frances's feelings is very insightful and psychologically intriguing.


**** Spoilers ****


In a way, I feel this story a little useless, at least for the protagonist. She refuses to change, and in the end the Fraziers and James grow tired of her, and she remains despairingly and depressed, having lost what she feels was her only hope for happiness in her later years. Curtain.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the book’s heroine, Frances, I once worked in the library of a mental health institution, and also like Frances, lived in the faded grandeur of London's Maida Vale. However I didn’t have an ancient family retainer to do my cooking and cleaning, alas; I was also very far from wealthy, and never became the plaything of glamorous socialites, so that’s where our similarity ends.

Apart from very mixed feelings about solitude, that is. The blessing and curse of solitude underpin everything in this novel, from Frances’ tentative writing career, to her painfully reserved relationships with others, to her self-image as a well-behaved but needy child. Although the social situations and dynamics don’t always ring true for me, Frances’ solitary interiority, which forms most of the narrative, is all too real. She is a fascinating, complicated, wonderfully drawn character: deeply stoical, overly dutiful, maddeningly unassertive, mildly delusional - and horribly relatable.

Glittering new friends and an apparent love interest give her the hope of a new life and new start that she craves - but also prevent her from writing, which formerly gave meaning to her watchful outsider’s life. Being an invisible observer means she can be a writer. But being invisible is no longer enough (hence the title). But to be a writer is also to demand ‘Look at me’. In this sense the novel takes place in a psychological hall of mirrors, in which the reader is also uncomfortably reflected, and the psychological complexity of this deceptively slight story is what made it for me such an immensely rich read. Despite its pervasive melancholy, there are plenty of moments of wry humour in the narrative, which writers and librarians in particular will savour. I did, anyway. (Look at me...)

Frances’ forensic tone, maintained throughout her rigidly controlled narrative of self-abasement, rejection and abandonment, drops for just one chilling moment in a line towards the end. And it comes like a punch in the gut.

Simply:

“I get things wrong, you see.”

That, there, is the genius of Anita Brookner, distilled into a single drop of brute-force wistfulness.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, enigmatic, heartbreaking: "Look At Me" is a little masterpiece, a portrait (told in carefully controlled first person) of a lonely young unmarried woman who is taken up by a careless, heartless, glamorous couple, used as a time as their plaything – induced to fall in love (not that she will admit this to herself) with a friend of theirs – and then discarded without ever knowing the reason why. For such a short book, with such a simple narrative arc, "Look At Me" vibrates with nuance: there's the medical research institute in whose image library the narrator, Frances, works (all these images of illness, injury, and death); there's her friend Olivia, handicapped by a spinal accident, of whom Frances says, when someone calls her a cripple, "Only physically"; there's the huge, hideous, empty flat Frances lives in, because it was her late mother's and she doesn't know how, or doesn't dare, to step out of the life someone else made for her; there's the mysterious failed love affair in her background that Frances glancingly refers to but never describes. No word is wasted here; no character, however minor, doesn't have import. The construction is elegant and inevitable. Just a beautiful, bleak little book.

[Dorothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book where nothing much happens, and the protagonist ends up in exactly the same place she was when she started.

Fannie is intelligent, attractive, well-off and utterly unhappy. She seems to exist in a kind of glass house, forever looking through the windows and yearning for a life that she is too afraid to get. Enter Nick and Alex, who seem to be bursting with the kind of vitality that Fannie lacks. She falls in with them, has a brief, glorious existence, and is burned, in short order. I don't really know how to describe the plot in a way that makes it more gripping, but I will say that I spent a good hour in quiet thought after I finished it. It's also one of the most beautifully written books I've read this year.

Fannie's story is swift and intense, but it doesn't differ much from the typical person's experience. Everything is in the details. Every experience, no matter how insignificant, has the potential to alter your existence in a profound and painful way. Therein lies the danger of taking a risk, of casting aside your fear, and trying to live.

[Lotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Till Raether · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a weird coincidence, this book describes EXACTLY how I became a writer also 🤯