#13: Look At Me by Jennifer Egan

A supermodel has a life-altering car wreck that ends up with her face being rebuilt, though unrecognizable; the results impact not only her but a teenage girl from her hometown, the supermodel's childhood friend, a downtrodden private eye, a mysterious figure known as Z and others in Jennifer Egan's genre pretzel of a novel, Look At Me.

Egan's novel The Keep was one of my favorite reads of recent years.  I didn't like this one quite as much, but it is very interesting throughout, with plenty of surprises and no linear paths to follow.  There are also lots of unique characters and very complicated characterizations. As in the last one I read, I thought the ending sort of ran out of steam, but I genuinely could not guess what was coming next; and as I read a lot of books, that means something.

Despite some flaws, I am beginning to think that Jennifer Egan is becoming one of my favorite new writers, almost entirely based on her unique storytelling alone.

I bought this for my beloved Kindle and read it at a steady pace.

#40: The Keep by Jennifer Egan

Genuinely creepy-crawly story-within-a-story features a pair of cousins working together (and sometimes against each other) in restoring an eerie, remote Eastern European castle; meanwhile, a prisoner attends a creative writing class while doing time and workshops a story about two cousins restoring an old castle, intriguing his troubled teacher.

Jennifer Egan's The Keep is an enjoyable, offbeat read that I was pleasantly surprised to find.  I had not heard of Jennifer Egan before a friend recommended this one.  I nabbed it off of www.paperbackswap.com and read it at a good clip.  Egan writes in an interesting voice and featured plenty of neat twists and turns with a chilling undertone throughout.

Unfortunately I thought the ending unraveled a bit, but I was completely sold on it for nine-tenths of the way through, and immediately went looking for more of Egan's work.  Recommended.