![Saturday](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569147789l/51940374._SX98_SY160_.jpg)
A few pages in and I thought it was going to be a struggle.
If your reading preference is for door-stop sized sagas featuring families or fantasies, Muriel Sparks's 134-page The Girls of Slender Means may not appeal. The girls in question are aged under thirty, living away from home at the May of Teck Club, and starting out on their working lives. It reminded me of all-female halls of residence at university.
I have no idea how Anita Brookner's 1983 book Look At Me came into my possession. It's an old paperback copy with yellowed pages and the back cover missing. I'd been told that the author's output was melancholy, which suits me fine, so when I spotted it on the shelf I thought I'd give it a go. And I'm glad I did.
The story's narrated by Frances Hinton a medical librarian and aspiring writer who yearns to be noticed. She fears that she will "grow into the most awful old battle-axe" and says she writes in order to become visible, to be heard, "to make people laugh". In other words, she says she wants people to "look at me".
I might have been half listening to one of those BBC Sounds programs whilst preparing lunch, or reading an end of year best books list in The Guardian. Whatever, someone recommended Paul Beatty's The Sellout and said it was about a black man who re-introduces slavery and segregation to the USA. What?!