Customer Reviews

Look At Me

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book was unbelievably bad. I only picked it up in the first place because I know someone who went to law school with the author. I put it down part way through because I didn't want to waste any more time on it. There's not enough time in life to read all the good books out there and this is not even close to being one of them.

I also find it particularly suspicious that the positive reviews are (1) from the author's residence (the local DC area), (2) someone with the author's last name who refers to the author by first name, or (3) anonymous. Perhaps a blatantly transparent job of self-promotion?

I thought this book was just a bunch of rambling, non-sensical and self-indulgent tripe. The writing is poor and the content, besides a few racy sections (which are all essentially contained the Amazon excerpt), is mind-numbingly boring.

Wow. I have honestly never read a book written in a more puerile, sophomoric and just plain annoying manner. I feel completely taken by the bait-and-switch way in which I was induced into purchasing this book. The Amazon excerpt is exciting and racy- but this is only the first three pages. The rest of the book is crammed with the author's senseless philosophizing and even more senseless imagery. Perhaps an example would do: "The bookstore was dark and tightly coiled and cavernous, the inside of some paper animal's intestine, or maybe a particularly scholarly alien's spaceship" (p. 73). I need say no more.

Having been caught in the trap of "Oprah"esque novels, Lauren Porosoff Mitchell's debut novel was a ravenous read and a breath of fresh air. Her evocative prose brings to life Dana, a powerful sexual aggressor struggling with the vulnerability she feels when loving and trusting men. While Look at Me is not laden with action and suspense, it is an absorbing read that exposes the raw, unadultered side of female promiscuity.

I was browsing the "new fiction" table at the front of a local DC bookshop when I stumbled across an autographed copy of "Look at Me" by Lauren Porosoff Mitchell. I finished reading it last night. Bravo to Ms. Mitchell for her excellent first novel. Remarkably written by a young women who had recently received her law degree, Mitchell describes Dana, a character struggling with herself. Mitchell paints the picture of a woman with two faces: The first face appears as she ravages innocent men night after night, lusting after the feeling of power she achieves with each notch on her bedpost. The second face appears as her character develops...she shows her feminine vulnerability as she falls for a one-night-stand, creating a fantasy love affair through letters, dreams, and thoughts.

But, thought frustrated with Dana, you can't help but relate to her on some level.

Lauren Porosoff Mitchell, good work! Looking forward to your second novel.....

Now where can I find those necklaces at Eastern Market?

I loved this book. Mitchell's story will most likely appeal to people at a certain point in life: early 20's, world upside down, engaging in reckless self-discovery. Of course it's self-indulgent. Who isn't at that age. But we look for other voices to resonate with our own and assure us we aren't doing this alone.

It's definitely not for the sensible types who like black and white and neat little packages. There's a fluidity to her writing, an ebbing and flowing that I found refreshing and stimulating. She doesn't draw conclusions or spell out moral lessons. She states the facts of her life, bare as bone, and uses poetic imagery as a vehicle to express her experiences.

If you've worn loneliness like a familiar t-shirt rather than a disabling condition, if you've entertained compulsive behaviour because you can't contain your rage, if you've seen your world in rhythyms and colors rather than facts and achievements, then read Look at Me and revel in all it's philosophical wanderings, fluid language and raw emotion.

Look at Me is uninhibited, robust, and very wide-open. Lauren Porosoff Mitchell is a master at teasing a phrase, capturing a mood, and orchestrating the sensual leading to the psychological. Dana's compulsive adventure -- a back-and-forth romp through the real and the virtual -- is seductive yet distant, bold yet timid, and flirtatious to the point of personal danger. Here is the rational in service of the irrational . . . the science of seduction. And yet here, too, is strength borne of vulnerability . . . the object of desire beckoning the voyeur to "look at me." It is into that beaker that the author pours out her soul and thereby colors her world. Love is a risky experiment. Indeed!

This novel, which reflects a young woman's deep pain, self-loathing, and need for control in a story of personal discovery is told in nothing short of poetic style. The dissonance between the beauty of the writing and the disturbing story it is used to tell make this book deeply affecting, as well as a profoundly revealing lesson for anyone who has ever doubted their own self-worth.