Don't Look at Me Like That

“Like Athill’s nonfiction, this too is an editor’s book, taut and briskly paced, precision-cut and ruthlessly economical…In Athill’s hands, economy never feels stingy: The effect is of luxurious distillation….This happy, if slightly astringent, dose of realism is what makes Athill’s lone novel something special, in our time, but hers as well.” —Sadie Stein, The New York Times Book Review

“The novel serves as an intriguing exposition of the thin dividing line between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Even the bohemian life Meg lives apart from Dick, punctuated by a flourishing illustration career and a bevy of romantic suitors, is painted in ordinary strokes…In having Meg dispense with many of the fantasies and illusions that sustain ordinary life, Athill suggests that we don’t know why we do the things we do.” —Mathilde Hjertholm Nielsen, Full Stop

“Don’t Look at Me Like That evokes a London of rain; grimy bedsits, plush, hushed restaurants, illicitness and despair. . . Athill skillfully blends diffidence and pathos to produce a story at once all-too familiar and unique.” —Catherine Taylor

“Athill is wonderful—always aware of the need to entertain and beguile her reader. . . Fascinating and surprising.” —Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

“[The writing] shows [Athill’s] editor’s eye. . . This novel shows not so much that Athill should have written more fiction—we wouldn’t want to be without those memoirs—but that she could.” —John Self, The Guardian

“Diana Athill’s writing is warm, straightforward, natural, enveloping. A blanketing comfort for a sore heart, a fuzzy head. . . . Athill’s skill as a writer of feelings is on full display. She is incisive without coming off as mean or angry, clear without being flat.” —Charles-Adam Foster-Simard, The Millions