MixedThe Washington PostLook at Me is ambitious, attempting to include in its compass a broad sampling of types. It includes, among other characters, a fashion model, an adjunct professor of cultural studies, a private detective, a Web impresario and a Shi'ite terrorist. These people end up spending a lot of time together in Rockford, Ill., a postindustrial botch of a burg and a lint trap of consumer culture … Ambitious as Egan is, she lets her narrative bloat. Subplot after subplot comes along – the brother of young Charlotte visits a massage parlor; the private detective struggles with a drinking problem; the cultural studies professor has a disjointed home life – leaving the reader to wonder what they add to the whole. The novel also wavers uneasily at times between sincerity and satire, and so ends up undercutting the potency of either mood. Nonetheless, Egan has created some compelling characters and written provocative meditations on our times.
