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Rating: 
Summary: Tiresome
Review: (Can I say it without sounding sexist? I suppose not.) Yet another self-loathing woman author with a feminist axe to grind. A good author with tremendous control over her art form, but tiresome nevertheless. The main character is so self absorbed that everything else is barely two dimentional. I'd much prefer Alice Munroe for a protrail of individuals and relationships with depth and solidity. Someone who understands [or tries to] the world beyond herself. Brookner never opens the door, not to let heself out or to let others in.
Rating: 
Summary: Yet another Brookner stunner
Review: As usual, Brookner manages to infuse her writings with any number of home truths. Her insights are often jarring and usually quite easy to apply to one's own life. Though sometimes dark on the surface, Brookner would never have her characters regret too much of their experiences. Pain and consequence are a matter of fact. I have read them all and have yet to think badly of a single one!
Rating: 
Summary: A Sad Introspective
Review: How sad Fanny has made her life. What strikes me odd is that she is quite intelligent yet doesn't see that she may be to blame for the unimportant life she leads. This novel is not the typical formula novel. There is no huge plot, no large turn in events, but just the thoughts of a young single girl in London. She is quite perceptive, if not overly contemplative when she meets and makes temporary friends with Nick and Alix. Then she meets James, and things don't seem so gloomy for her, for now she has reason not to hurry the days away. I think this is a great book for what it's worth. Great literature minus a huge plot. The author does a great job in making a memorable character without having the reading see her through countless events.
Rating:
Summary: A Sad Introspective
Review: How sad Fanny has made her life. What strikes me odd is that she is quite intelligent yet doesn't see that she may be to blame for the unimportant life she leads. This novel is not the typical formula novel. There is no huge plot, no large turn in events, but just the thoughts of a young single girl in London. She is quite perceptive, if not overly contemplative when she meets and makes temporary friends with Nick and Alix. Then she meets James, and things don't seem so gloomy for her, for now she has reason not to hurry the days away. I think this is a great book for what it's worth. Great literature minus a huge plot. The author does a great job in making a memorable character without having the reading see her through countless events.
Rating:
Summary: Figuring Fanny Hinton
Review: Some authors create characters so memorable that they refuse to be dislodged from our brains. These literary sailors scamper up into the rigging of our imagination and unfurl huge sails to carry us far. Such is Fanny Hinton of "Look at Me." Brookner makes the reader feel her embarrassment and anguish so deeply that, were the room in utter darkness and no one else present, one would still feel a pounding blush spread over one's face to read of it. "Look at Me" will grip you and not put you down. Unlike life itself for Fanny, it will not disappoint, for this novel's author is brilliant. She writes fiction the way a veteran cowpuncher rides the range: smoothly, with velvety confidence and her eyes fixed quietly on the certain goal ahead. Some Brookner themes are recurrent and, though effective, can become tiresome: the child of wealthy parents who, though plain in appearance, is as overwrought as a rococo clock; the tea and crumpets which are whipped out whenever anyone catches a chill or a bad case of rejection; the doddering housekeeper who aggravates but is always there in a pinch; the people who take to their beds and become professional invalids whenever the fillet of life toughens into jerkey. This book is not free of these and other fare on the standard Brookner menu. At times they can be too predictable and something of a yawn. But Fanny Hinton of "Look at Me" will remain in the reader's memory long after the more washed-out characters of lesser writers have faded into amnesic oblivion. In just about any novelistic talent show going, she can justifiably stand up tall and take her bow: though quiet as a cloud, this character is made up of one hundred percent pure electricity.
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