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Don't Look at Me Like That
In 1950s England, well-brought-up young women are meant to aspire to the respectable life. Some things are not to be spoken of; some are most certainly not to be done. There are rules, conventions. Meg Bailey obeys them. She progresses from Home Counties school to un-Bohemian art college with few outward signs of passion or frustration. Her personality is submerged in polite routines; even with her best friend, Roxane, what can't be said looms far larger than what can. But circumstances change. Meg gets a job and moves to London. Roxane gets married to a man picked out by her mother. And then Meg does something shocking - shocking not only by the standards of her time, but by our own. As sharp and startling now as when it was written, Don't Look at Me Like That matches Diana Athill's memoirs After a Funeral and Instead of a Letter in its gift for storytelling and its unflinching candour about love and betrayal.
187 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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2306 people want to read
About the author
Diana Athill
34 books225 followersDiana Athill was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company André Deutsch Ltd.
She was born in Norfolk in 1917 and educated at home until she was fourteen. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and graduated in 1939. She spent the war years working at the BBC Overseas Service in the News Information Department. After the war she met André Deutsch and fell into publishing. She worked as an editor, first at Allan Wingate and then at André Deutsch, until her retirement at the age of 75 in 1993.
Her books include An Unavoidable Delay, a collection of short stories published in 1962 and two 'documentary' books After A Funeral and Make Believe. Stet is a memoir of Diana Athill's fifty-year career in publishing. Granta has also reissued a memoir Instead of a Letter and her only novel Don't Look at Me Like That. She lived in Primrose Hill in London.
She was born in Norfolk in 1917 and educated at home until she was fourteen. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and graduated in 1939. She spent the war years working at the BBC Overseas Service in the News Information Department. After the war she met André Deutsch and fell into publishing. She worked as an editor, first at Allan Wingate and then at André Deutsch, until her retirement at the age of 75 in 1993.
Her books include An Unavoidable Delay, a collection of short stories published in 1962 and two 'documentary' books After A Funeral and Make Believe. Stet is a memoir of Diana Athill's fifty-year career in publishing. Granta has also reissued a memoir Instead of a Letter and her only novel Don't Look at Me Like That. She lived in Primrose Hill in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews
August 20, 2021
3.75 stars
This is Diana Athill’s only novel and was written in the mid 60s (set in the 1950s). She wrote a few short stories and several volumes of memoirs in her long life. Her main work was in publishing and the list of authors she worked with is impressive. Her personal life was also very interesting and much too complex to examine here!
The novel revolves around a young woman called Meg Bailey. She has a cloistered upbringing, the daughter of a clergyman who is as impecunious as the mythical church mouse. When grown, following art school, she moves to 1950s London and has some of the usual adventures of youth, but in particular an affair with her best friend’s husband.
The opening and closing of the novel are striking:
“When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me”
“There’s something almost enjoyable in having one person in the world I can truly hate.”
At one level this is a simple coming of age novel that focuses on belonging:
“I wanted to rush on into unknown territory forever, safe in the warm intimacy of the car, the blanket rough against my chin, the men singing and joking, Roxane reaching into the back from time to time to feed me a chocolate, and neither of the two in front knowing that my hand was fast in Dick’s. I was eighteen and no one had ever held my hand before. Wilfred had always been too shy to attempt physical contact beyond bumping into me occasionally. This was a new move in the game, and a big one.”
It is also an examination of women of a certain type and class and at one level not a great deal happens, but with Athill there are twists. One of the significant characters in the book is Egyptian. The novel covers the period of Suez and Nasser and Jamil’s reaction is nuanced and complex.
On the whole this is fairly short, easy to read, though a little flimsy, but the ending is interesting and it evokes 1950s London.
This is Diana Athill’s only novel and was written in the mid 60s (set in the 1950s). She wrote a few short stories and several volumes of memoirs in her long life. Her main work was in publishing and the list of authors she worked with is impressive. Her personal life was also very interesting and much too complex to examine here!
The novel revolves around a young woman called Meg Bailey. She has a cloistered upbringing, the daughter of a clergyman who is as impecunious as the mythical church mouse. When grown, following art school, she moves to 1950s London and has some of the usual adventures of youth, but in particular an affair with her best friend’s husband.
The opening and closing of the novel are striking:
“When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me”
“There’s something almost enjoyable in having one person in the world I can truly hate.”
At one level this is a simple coming of age novel that focuses on belonging:
“I wanted to rush on into unknown territory forever, safe in the warm intimacy of the car, the blanket rough against my chin, the men singing and joking, Roxane reaching into the back from time to time to feed me a chocolate, and neither of the two in front knowing that my hand was fast in Dick’s. I was eighteen and no one had ever held my hand before. Wilfred had always been too shy to attempt physical contact beyond bumping into me occasionally. This was a new move in the game, and a big one.”
It is also an examination of women of a certain type and class and at one level not a great deal happens, but with Athill there are twists. One of the significant characters in the book is Egyptian. The novel covers the period of Suez and Nasser and Jamil’s reaction is nuanced and complex.
On the whole this is fairly short, easy to read, though a little flimsy, but the ending is interesting and it evokes 1950s London.
September 7, 2024
A most surprising book! A gentle ambling read with a continuous unfolding of little gems that gave this character-driven story real guts and authenticity.
It’s the 1950’s and Meg Bailey, a rural Vicars daughter, is just on the threshold of adulthood. As she matures into an independent young woman, it becomes apparent that some of her choices aren’t exactly sensible. Much to her parents disappointment.
“I knew that if anything could make me mad it would be someone rummaging in my subconscious and dragging out all kinds of disgusting horrors - why does a mind have a subconscious if it’s not for keeping things hidden?”
She learns how to embrace her thought processes and inner battles of right and wrong. She is considered a ‘nice girl’ by most, but has this undercurrent of rebellion. It’s a question of whether it’s a destructive and selfish life Meg is leading, or an exciting, carefree one.
I was mesmerised by Meg and every other character, the familiarity of certain situations rung true, and the descriptions of grimy bed-sits and despair were weirdly joyous.
“Rock bottom is solid, so that you can rest on it, which is not agreeable but is a relief after years of treading water”.
Not the most gripping or action-packed book by a long chalk. Athill’s writing is so deserving of five stars, it put quite a spell on me 🪄💫
It’s the 1950’s and Meg Bailey, a rural Vicars daughter, is just on the threshold of adulthood. As she matures into an independent young woman, it becomes apparent that some of her choices aren’t exactly sensible. Much to her parents disappointment.
“I knew that if anything could make me mad it would be someone rummaging in my subconscious and dragging out all kinds of disgusting horrors - why does a mind have a subconscious if it’s not for keeping things hidden?”
She learns how to embrace her thought processes and inner battles of right and wrong. She is considered a ‘nice girl’ by most, but has this undercurrent of rebellion. It’s a question of whether it’s a destructive and selfish life Meg is leading, or an exciting, carefree one.
I was mesmerised by Meg and every other character, the familiarity of certain situations rung true, and the descriptions of grimy bed-sits and despair were weirdly joyous.
“Rock bottom is solid, so that you can rest on it, which is not agreeable but is a relief after years of treading water”.
Not the most gripping or action-packed book by a long chalk. Athill’s writing is so deserving of five stars, it put quite a spell on me 🪄💫
Read
November 28, 2023Novels about adultery (are there any novels not about adultery?) tend to be as awkward as their subject, and also like their subject, they rarely end well. So here. Still, this was a good enough read, until that ending, which never seemed promising.
----- ----- ----- -----
The last book I read also featured adultery. While both books were written in the first person singular by female authors, there were necessarily male adulterer characters. Perhaps I alone would be tickled by this, but the male adulterer in My Death was named Willy, and the male adulterer here was named Dick.
----- ----- ----- -----
The last book I read also featured adultery. While both books were written in the first person singular by female authors, there were necessarily male adulterer characters. Perhaps I alone would be tickled by this, but the male adulterer in My Death was named Willy, and the male adulterer here was named Dick.
February 17, 2020
While Diana Athill was perhaps best known for her work as a literary editor and memoirist, she also produced a small number of works of fiction, particularly towards the beginning of her career. One of these books – a 1967 novel entitled Don’t Look at Me Like That – has just been reissued by Granta in a stylish new edition (very 1960s in terms of artwork). It is, in some respects, a coming-of-age story, imbued with the pleasure and pain of illicit love, all set within the bohemian milieu of Oxford and London in the 1950s.
To read my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
To read my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
April 4, 2024
Don’t Look At Me Like That is a strange flighty novel about a strange flighty young woman. Meg grows up in a rural parsonage and comes of age at art school in Oxford in the 50s before moving to London and working as an illustrator. I loved the way this was written and the in depth look inside Meg’s inner thoughts - the doubts, the honest vanity, the silly repulsions and the kind thoughts and insights about her friends. A lot of modern writing is compared to Sally Rooney (in the hopes of selling more I guess?) but this novel about class, an affair and one confused young woman, written in the 60s is the closest to Rooney I’ve ever read.
March 29, 2020
I'd read and enjoyed one of Diana Athill's memoirs, but didn't know she wrote fiction, and in fact this was her only novel. It follows the first 25 years in the life of Meg, the only child of a country vicar and his wife, an awkward and aloof child who is however blessed with good looks which make her attractive to men as she grows up, rather to her bemusement. She seems to be asexual but falls in love with her best friend's husband, which obviously complicates her life.
Meg is not an easy character to like, as her aloofness and even arrogance makes her as offputting in fiction as she probably would be in real life, but she's very well drawn. I wonder how close she is to a self-portrait. She seems not to quite fit in with the world and the people around her, and I did feel sorry for her. She's very open and honest about herself, at any rate.
Although this book is mostly a character study, it's also atmospheric as a portrait of life for a young woman in London in the mid-20th century, and reminded me very much of Rosamond Lehmann's books.
Meg is not an easy character to like, as her aloofness and even arrogance makes her as offputting in fiction as she probably would be in real life, but she's very well drawn. I wonder how close she is to a self-portrait. She seems not to quite fit in with the world and the people around her, and I did feel sorry for her. She's very open and honest about herself, at any rate.
Although this book is mostly a character study, it's also atmospheric as a portrait of life for a young woman in London in the mid-20th century, and reminded me very much of Rosamond Lehmann's books.
November 24, 2023
This novel set in London was written in the 60s but set in the 50s (and recently republished), and was billed in a recent essay in the NYT as having a surprisingly modern feel. Well, not particularly so, in my estimation, unless a story about a provincial middle-class girl making her own way in the big city and having a years-long love affair with her best friend’s husband fills that bill.
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December 21, 2021More than anything else this felt like a love letter to friendship. Athill paints intimate pictures of kitchen-table conversations and raucous laughter, layered carefully between moments of real pain. Meg is curiously cold; she is consistently adored by those around her but incapable of demonstrative affection herself (that is, until she meets Dick). Athill's astute depictions of the depths of depression and other related mental health issues are far ahead of their time. There is an honesty to her prose both on this subject and on intimacy that is striking. The narrator's awareness of her own faults is often frustrating but satisfying simultaneously. Often relatable to the point of pain, from an era of Britain that is almost unrecognisable.
"It was a flat, tedious, numbing misery, and that kind isn't hard to live with, it's only hard not to be changed by it. What I felt threatened by as the outward sign of my inward condition was not any dramatic collapse but things like dull hair, dry skin, scuffed shoes, and sweaters overdue for washing"
"So it was, and went on being, as though nothing had happened. I had loved - still loved - a man, which was supposed to be the climactic event in my life, and it had made no difference to my getting up in the morning, waiting for buses, working, meeting people, coming home to bed, being lonely. I had learned that the man was not worth loving and it hadn't stopped me loving him. [...] If I saw that a choice was a wise one, I didn't therefore become able to make it; if I knew an action was right I didn't therefore become able to take it. [...] And because of the inertia which comes with depression, when I talked to someone at a party his attention would wander, he would be keeping an eye out for someone more attractive. I might as well have not been there."
"It was a flat, tedious, numbing misery, and that kind isn't hard to live with, it's only hard not to be changed by it. What I felt threatened by as the outward sign of my inward condition was not any dramatic collapse but things like dull hair, dry skin, scuffed shoes, and sweaters overdue for washing"
"So it was, and went on being, as though nothing had happened. I had loved - still loved - a man, which was supposed to be the climactic event in my life, and it had made no difference to my getting up in the morning, waiting for buses, working, meeting people, coming home to bed, being lonely. I had learned that the man was not worth loving and it hadn't stopped me loving him. [...] If I saw that a choice was a wise one, I didn't therefore become able to make it; if I knew an action was right I didn't therefore become able to take it. [...] And because of the inertia which comes with depression, when I talked to someone at a party his attention would wander, he would be keeping an eye out for someone more attractive. I might as well have not been there."
April 23, 2024
I will never not be shocked when a book written over 50 years ago resonates so deeply with my own experiences. And it’s always the funny, meaningless little observations that get me. Here are some of my favorites from this book:
“The two of them felt like family to me, but more amusing because they were my own age and not family” lol
“Sometimes when I have looked out of a train when traveling in an unfamiliar country I have glimpsed people talking in a doorway or workmen eating their lunch in the shade of a hedge or children chasing a dog, and have had an intense longing for the train to stop so that I could get out and be a part of that scene; a feeling that there I would get it, would be in this foreign life and not just looking at it.”
“What was frightening was less the feeling that these girls didn’t want me than the sense that an invisible watcher would see me as pitiable.”
The curse of reading someone’s thoughts is that they’re likely going to be kind of evil sometimes. So while I related to so much of Meg’s musings, I also hated her, especially for her romantic choices (adultery, ugh). But we do get to see her called out and learn from her bad decisions in a very human way.
I really, really enjoyed this one.
“The two of them felt like family to me, but more amusing because they were my own age and not family” lol
“Sometimes when I have looked out of a train when traveling in an unfamiliar country I have glimpsed people talking in a doorway or workmen eating their lunch in the shade of a hedge or children chasing a dog, and have had an intense longing for the train to stop so that I could get out and be a part of that scene; a feeling that there I would get it, would be in this foreign life and not just looking at it.”
“What was frightening was less the feeling that these girls didn’t want me than the sense that an invisible watcher would see me as pitiable.”
The curse of reading someone’s thoughts is that they’re likely going to be kind of evil sometimes. So while I related to so much of Meg’s musings, I also hated her, especially for her romantic choices (adultery, ugh). But we do get to see her called out and learn from her bad decisions in a very human way.
I really, really enjoyed this one.
September 17, 2020
Every sentence is amazing.
July 15, 2025
An astute little gem. The world of Athill’s prose is warm, comforting, even. Hers is an observant eye— insightful, and probing.
March 16, 2022
I initially picked this book up purely because of the cover and once I saw the main character was called Meg, my name, I was sold. This is the story of Meg Bailey as she journeys into adulthood in 1950’s England. I really enjoyed this book and found it to be such a slow burn. It took me a little while to become fully invested but gosh it was worth pushing myself. I absolutely loved the modern writing and the story itself. I felt so conflicted by the character of Meg, at times I loved her and the perspective she provided whilst I found myself making excuses for her bad decisions and self-destructive actions. I really enjoyed this book and was definitely mesmerised by Athill’s beautiful writing style.
August 30, 2024
There's a clarity and precision to the writing in this story of a young woman's coming of age and her affair with a friend's husband that really appealed to me. Athill's sentences are so sharp and striking and there's a wonderful sense of 1950's London, grimy bedsits and all. I don't think I liked Meg but I would also love to have a conversation with her? She feels so fully realized and compelling in a relatively short book. The sense of time and place is very strong but this also feels very modern and I would love to see it be more widely read. I think fans of Sally Rooney would really enjoy this.
August 27, 2023
I related to the main character a lot
August 19, 2023
I quite enjoyed this novel….never sure where it was heading but it turned out to be headed in a very satisfying direction.
January 30, 2024
Four stars seems a little high ngl. But the ending kind of made up for it. MC is incredibly awful in a tasteful way if that’s possible. It’s giving New Girl but with ✨affairs✨
August 12, 2013
I'm gonna try not to be bothered that Diana Athill ended this beautiful introspective emotionally-relateable book with the word "hate." Otherwise, this was very real even if you haven't had the same experience as Meg Bailey, the heroine of this novel who begins her story inviting you when she says, "When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me, and it wasn't far from true" and it's like, "Yes! a sort of unpopular-girl type of narrative" who comes to realize her value (she's pretty, and she becomes successful as an illustrator for children's books).
Meg's parents are very conservative. Her father is a Church of England parson and her mother seems uptight, so Meg was raised in a frugal minimal countryside way, and the only girl Meg was really friends with in school was Roxanne, who lived in London I think with her mother, which is how this all started. At Roxanne's house, Meg meets Roxanne's mother (very sociable and controlling: two intimidating qualities together) + Dick, who visits the family but is also like, Roxanne's cousin.
Meg goes to Oxford to major in art and leaves home but is now closer to Roxanne's house so now she gets to hang out even more with her friend and Dick, who is described on the same sociable level as Roxanne's mother but he's more like, playing along vs. owning it as part of his identity/life.
I might be getting the order of events mixed up a little but I think it's after college that Meg finds out that Roxanne's mother had the intention of setting her daughter up to marry Dick for years and meanwhile, Meg had been casually/distantly letting herself find Dick attractive romantically as she connects to him more and more, meditating later in the book how similar she and Dick are, how they complement each other and find comfort in being fully themselves together, etc.
So Meg and Dick carry on an affair for years, with the joy and guilt that comes with it, get caught by a friend of Roxanne's mother and suffer a depressing period, then can't help but carry the affair on some more but less frequently and the agony torment tedious waiting and the descriptions and reflections of this entire relationship is so—everything!! It is very much like reading Lorrie Moore's "How to Be an Other Woman", Chris Kraus's I Love Dick. Situations suck, and they try to work it out- - -sort of- - -
+
++
+
Would have been great to have this kind of sad closure type of ending (even though generally the end has an event that is pretty life-affirming!) instead of the abrupt word "hate" that really felt inconsistent with the rest of the book, like this paragraph of the last weekend Meg and Dick shared is so great, on pg. 172—
We both cried when we were in bed, until at last it made us laugh: the two of us with our noses running so that we had to disentangle, sit up, and grope for handkerchiefs, both of us so ugly and feeling so ill. But something strange happened: those hours in bed were good, not bad. Rock bottom is solid, so that you can rest on it, which is not agreeable but is a relief after years of treading water. I thought I knew myself and that I was sure that I would rather get drunk and take pills and go to bed with strangers than face facts—they are all pleasanter activities than facing facts, so it is only sensible to prefer them. Yet in that Belgian bed, when there was no alternative to facing facts, it was good, not bad. I knew that Dick loved me as much as he could, which was not enough to make him change his way of living; I knew that I must not stop him going to America even if I could, and that anyway I couldn't; and I knew that he would never come back. When I had to start living with this knowledge, day after day, it would surely be death, but in that bed I was resting.
+ + +
Other parts photographed:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/jxcdfrzgg0...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/uhe89srodc...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/egtczs7odx...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/4n3hbo16c1...-
Meg's parents are very conservative. Her father is a Church of England parson and her mother seems uptight, so Meg was raised in a frugal minimal countryside way, and the only girl Meg was really friends with in school was Roxanne, who lived in London I think with her mother, which is how this all started. At Roxanne's house, Meg meets Roxanne's mother (very sociable and controlling: two intimidating qualities together) + Dick, who visits the family but is also like, Roxanne's cousin.
Meg goes to Oxford to major in art and leaves home but is now closer to Roxanne's house so now she gets to hang out even more with her friend and Dick, who is described on the same sociable level as Roxanne's mother but he's more like, playing along vs. owning it as part of his identity/life.
I might be getting the order of events mixed up a little but I think it's after college that Meg finds out that Roxanne's mother had the intention of setting her daughter up to marry Dick for years and meanwhile, Meg had been casually/distantly letting herself find Dick attractive romantically as she connects to him more and more, meditating later in the book how similar she and Dick are, how they complement each other and find comfort in being fully themselves together, etc.
So Meg and Dick carry on an affair for years, with the joy and guilt that comes with it, get caught by a friend of Roxanne's mother and suffer a depressing period, then can't help but carry the affair on some more but less frequently and the agony torment tedious waiting and the descriptions and reflections of this entire relationship is so—everything!! It is very much like reading Lorrie Moore's "How to Be an Other Woman", Chris Kraus's I Love Dick. Situations suck, and they try to work it out- - -sort of- - -
+
++
+
Would have been great to have this kind of sad closure type of ending (even though generally the end has an event that is pretty life-affirming!) instead of the abrupt word "hate" that really felt inconsistent with the rest of the book, like this paragraph of the last weekend Meg and Dick shared is so great, on pg. 172—
We both cried when we were in bed, until at last it made us laugh: the two of us with our noses running so that we had to disentangle, sit up, and grope for handkerchiefs, both of us so ugly and feeling so ill. But something strange happened: those hours in bed were good, not bad. Rock bottom is solid, so that you can rest on it, which is not agreeable but is a relief after years of treading water. I thought I knew myself and that I was sure that I would rather get drunk and take pills and go to bed with strangers than face facts—they are all pleasanter activities than facing facts, so it is only sensible to prefer them. Yet in that Belgian bed, when there was no alternative to facing facts, it was good, not bad. I knew that Dick loved me as much as he could, which was not enough to make him change his way of living; I knew that I must not stop him going to America even if I could, and that anyway I couldn't; and I knew that he would never come back. When I had to start living with this knowledge, day after day, it would surely be death, but in that bed I was resting.
+ + +
Other parts photographed:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/jxcdfrzgg0...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/uhe89srodc...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/egtczs7odx...
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/4n3hbo16c1...-
March 13, 2024
I read it twice because the first time wasn’t enough. 5/5
The first time I read it I disagreed with everything she did. But the second time I simply loved how Meg is so unapologetic in a time when it was expected for her to be the opposite. I love how she created this career for herself separate from her history and her family. I always feel a connection to her because she becomes an illustrator, and I don’t know whether that has something to do with how much I like both it and her.
Meg is ungrateful and selfish and has so much bitterness in her. I hate how she treats her parents and I hate how she treats her friend. But also? she is unwavering and brave and lonely in some ways, and it makes me want to go over to her house and have a conversation with her.
I found the writing so comforting and so relaxing to casually read, these are my quotes !
“it’s hateful and damnable and a crashing bore, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“There is something almost enjoyable in having one person in the world I can truly hate.”
“Even when he snored I liked it, because he was there.”
The first time I read it I disagreed with everything she did. But the second time I simply loved how Meg is so unapologetic in a time when it was expected for her to be the opposite. I love how she created this career for herself separate from her history and her family. I always feel a connection to her because she becomes an illustrator, and I don’t know whether that has something to do with how much I like both it and her.
Meg is ungrateful and selfish and has so much bitterness in her. I hate how she treats her parents and I hate how she treats her friend. But also? she is unwavering and brave and lonely in some ways, and it makes me want to go over to her house and have a conversation with her.
I found the writing so comforting and so relaxing to casually read, these are my quotes !
“it’s hateful and damnable and a crashing bore, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“There is something almost enjoyable in having one person in the world I can truly hate.”
“Even when he snored I liked it, because he was there.”
July 29, 2024
This is the story of a young lady named Meg who actually reminded me quite a bit of myself, with regard to her morals in decision-making and her attitude toward life. She lived in London somewhere around the 1950's (I think), but this just goes to show that people have always been the same no matter where or when they lived. Meg makes some questionable life decisions, and this book ends with possibly the best last line I have ever seen (after having been accurately called out by someone who sees her for who she really is): "There's something almost enjoyable in having one person in the world I can truly hate."
Read
January 18, 20243.5
April 11, 2024
It takes a while to get going, but bear with it, and you’ll be rewarded with a much more interesting plot than the beginning would have you believe.
July 13, 2024
This one was just available when I was looking to load up on books for my vacation. I saw it was short and when I started, it felt very autobiographical. Turns out it is fiction (but the afterword notes that it Meg's life parallels Athill in many ways).
Overall it is a compelling and interesting character study. It is an interesting picture of growing up poor (but "titled") in England in the 50s and 60s. Unfortunately I do not have much patience today for this review and so I'll end with just a few quotes that I found pertinant:
"I was unfair when I was irritated by her nostalgic talk. The girlhood she had spent in that house must really have been far more comfortable and agreeable than her prsent life, and instead of thinking her absurd for regretting the past a little I should have admired her for tackling the present so bravely--which she did."
"My mother, who was liked much less (people sensed that she was dutiful rather than interested)"
"Bubbles of flattery rose from this, but each one was instantly pricked by my failure to be worthy ofit, and by the time dinner was over I could not believe that this constant deflation was free of malice."
"It was not possible to be easy with her because her frustrated energy might at any moment crack the surface. It did so sometimes in fits of temper over trivial causes, and these frighted Rozane. They frightened me too--loss of control in a woman so dedicated to a performance was shocking--but it was the sight of Roxane's slient crumbling which most affected me."
"It is disappointing in a way, at last penetrating one of the pockets of life you don't know and finding that it's nothing but a part of ordinary life."
"I hadn't realized before how much difference there is between a threat which you hope will work and one which you will certainly carry out."
Overall it is a compelling and interesting character study. It is an interesting picture of growing up poor (but "titled") in England in the 50s and 60s. Unfortunately I do not have much patience today for this review and so I'll end with just a few quotes that I found pertinant:
"I was unfair when I was irritated by her nostalgic talk. The girlhood she had spent in that house must really have been far more comfortable and agreeable than her prsent life, and instead of thinking her absurd for regretting the past a little I should have admired her for tackling the present so bravely--which she did."
"My mother, who was liked much less (people sensed that she was dutiful rather than interested)"
"Bubbles of flattery rose from this, but each one was instantly pricked by my failure to be worthy ofit, and by the time dinner was over I could not believe that this constant deflation was free of malice."
"It was not possible to be easy with her because her frustrated energy might at any moment crack the surface. It did so sometimes in fits of temper over trivial causes, and these frighted Rozane. They frightened me too--loss of control in a woman so dedicated to a performance was shocking--but it was the sight of Roxane's slient crumbling which most affected me."
"It is disappointing in a way, at last penetrating one of the pockets of life you don't know and finding that it's nothing but a part of ordinary life."
"I hadn't realized before how much difference there is between a threat which you hope will work and one which you will certainly carry out."
April 4, 2011
This extremely introspective novel of a girl's growth into womanhood in 1950's London was rather a bore. The narrator, Meg, examines every situation she's in and every feeling she has about it to an incredible degree. This might be less jarring if told from a third person omniscient narrator, but in first person it becomes almost unbearable in its intense naval-gazing. Also, I find I don't really like her that much. Her story is supposed to be rather shocking and racy for the time and place it was written, but I found it both predictable and rather distasteful. Another character refers to Meg as a "cock-teasing bitch" and although she prefers to ascribe the comment to the speaker's own sadness and bitterness, I can't disagree with her. My personal philosophy is to live life having as much fun as possible without hurting anyone. Meg seems to live as miserably as possible, "unintentionally" hurting many people, and always being concerned with how she appears to an unseen outside non-existent observer. Since I as the reader am just such an observer, I'd advise her to stop being such a whiny bitch and grow up. She is the kind of woman who gives the rest of us a crazy, neurotic, hysterical bad name.
December 5, 2024
Typed my review and lost it! But this is worth reading for the protagonist whose precious, narcissistic commentary on almost all of the major firsts of life is highly entertaining.
April 12, 2017
I just couldn't get into this book. While the concept of the story was interesting, it really seemed to drag in places and I kept feeling impatient with the main character. Maybe I heard too much hype about this one before I read it, but I thought it was disappointing.
September 15, 2011
A beautiful memoir of a young illustrator in search of her womanliness. Unexpected ending, marvellous.
January 13, 2024
Strongly recommended. Perfect read on the plane today.
November 24, 2024
This book is a mirror.
With small changes in details, it reflects the inner palaver -- the judgements, the justifications, the plans, the reflections the weltschmertz -- of life.
Meg's monologue about the motivations and aspirations of those around her, along with her explanations of her own behavior, reveal hidden truths and contradictions, a Meg who reflects the reader's own mental performance.
An utterly brilliant book.
With small changes in details, it reflects the inner palaver -- the judgements, the justifications, the plans, the reflections the weltschmertz -- of life.
Meg's monologue about the motivations and aspirations of those around her, along with her explanations of her own behavior, reveal hidden truths and contradictions, a Meg who reflects the reader's own mental performance.
An utterly brilliant book.
January 25, 2025
A surprisingly lovely read with encapsulations of emotions and situations I’ve dealt with - would’ve been 5 stars if not for the last 3rd of book.
The Afterword by Helen Oyeyemi was 🤌🤌
The Afterword by Helen Oyeyemi was 🤌🤌
May 6, 2025
Really enjoyed this but the very end felt pretty random
Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews