Look at Me by Anita Brookner 10 out of 10

 Look at Me by Anita Brookner

10 out of 10


Having read the marvelous Hotel du Lac by the same author, winner of the Man Booker Prize, I have not been so surprised to find that Look at Me is fantastic, riveting, absorbing, but also heartbreaking, sad, even hard to read at time, when the protagonist seems to be dying within.

The narrator is also the heroine of the phenomenal story, young, intelligent, kind, tolerant, shy, generous, polite, timid Frances Hinton, called by friends and colleagues at the library Fanny.
She works in a rather depressing environment, where they find paintings, all descriptions of diseases and then they file them, for the use of the doctors, two of the major characters in the novel, Doctor Nick Fraser and later on, but more important also, Doctor James Anstey.

Olivia is a good friend of the heroine and had suffered an accident that terribly affected her body, but as the insightful, compassionate, wondrous Fanny would remark when the superficial, cruel, often vicious Alix Fraser would suggest that spending time with a "crippled woman is not fun", Olivia is physically ill, but otherwise she is a wondrous girl.
The life of the protagonist changes dramatically when she meets Alix, the spouse of the Doctor she already knows from work, a woman with the mentioned defects, but endowed with many qualities as well, full of energy, creative, smart, exuberant, sometimes helpful, curious about people, entertaining and with an elan vital that is remarkable when she is not in one of her dark moods.

Alix had lived in Jamaica, as the daughter of a very rich man,mentioning often the good old days, the sunshine and warm weather, that is so different from the frequent rain and the bad weather of London, where the Frasers have a smaller flat than their new friend and they invite the heroine to move and live with them in the spare room.
The protagonist lives in rather downcast surroundings, even if she is rather well off, after her mother's death, she shares a large apartment, where three rooms are not even used, with the long time servant, Nancy, in what feels like the very recipe for sadness and gloom.

This idea would change, when the heroine becomes happier, as a result of socializing - which had been lacking - a crucial element for our wellbeing and ultimately survival, as positive psychology studies show - isolation is twice as fatal as smoking.
The title of this fantastic book refers to the need that the heroine, who is a writer, has but cannot express, being forced somehow to find solace, consolation in writing, for she is not selfish, she fades away and considers the needs of the others before her own in society and thus becomes, is a victim.

She would gladly give up her writing, if "real life" would be available to her and indeed, when she becomes habituated to go out, dine with her new friends, Alix and Nick, she does not write her notes, the journal and material for her future novel anymore.

"Writing is a penance, an attempt to reach out to others and make them love you" she says.
It is also "a protest when you find you have no voice in the tribunals of the world"

Going out with the boisterous, loud, interesting, if often difficult and complaining Alix, who keeps saying "she has come down in the world", although at times jocularly and with great effect, has boosted the moral of Fanny to the point where she is ready for a new life.

One may have to say...ready for life period and not the simulacrum invented in her writing.

She then meets James, a doctor she has seen before, but they had not been acquainted and with the he help of Alix and Nick, the heroine becomes attached to this interesting character, very similar to the protagonist in the suffering they had both experienced, the shyness, politeness, decency and so many other ways.
Frances is encouraged to get close to the fourth person in this friendship, up to the point where James moves out of his mother's house, where he had been living, and into the spare room of the Frasers and everything changes from here, making this reader think of a ménage a trois that must have been taking place.

Whereas for the first chapter in their relationship, maybe even the next four, Fanny was not in love with James - and Alix interferes without any right one might say and seems to order her to stop if she is not amorously involved - it appears that once she cannot appear to reach the remote, estranged new man, she loves him more than looks reasonable.

Look at Me is a glorious psychological novel, engrossing, provoking, included for good reason on

The Guardian 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, where mysteriously Hotel du Lac is missing, but should be included...in the Top 50, if you ask me.