At Electric Lit the author shared a list of "books about models, ranging from young adult fiction to critical thinking, [that] exposes the contradictory ugliness and transcendence of being professionally beautiful." One title on the list:
Look At Me by Jennifer EganRead about another entry on the list.
Charlotte Swenson, a falling star of Manhattan’s fashion scene, gets into a near-fatal car crash outside her hometown in Illinois, becoming unrecognisable. While the premise of Jennifer Egan’s second novel could be the jumping-off point for deep-dive into the beauty and disfigurement, the concerns of Look At Me are much broader: small town life, family madness, industrialisation, American dreams and nightmares, the construction and commodification of identity. It’s an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink novel, and doesn’t always cohere, yet it’s packed with ideas and weirdly prescient about online self-curation.
Look At Me is among Jennifer Banash's seven novels about selling your soul, Jenny Shank's five big, engrossing books, and Julie Christie's seven favorite books.
--Marshal Zeringue