Frances, who begins to write her own story (which we have just read) on the last page of Look at me, is tougher than many reviewers have made her seem. Her melancholy retrospect shows a bravery of wit. More than this, she has her revenge. 'Look at me' has two ranges of tone: sad ('just look at me now') or demanding attention with the gaiety of self-assertion. What Frances is denied is not simply love, but good manners. It is the public devaluation of her by the group she so admires that devastates her. When she regains composure, she will seek them out again, apparently meekly, but with an undeclared purpose: 'I needed them for material.' This is not how a well-mannered person should treat her acquaintance, but look at the previously admired Alix Fraser: 'Alix stubbed out her cigarette in the remains of her yellow custard and smeared red over her wide mouth.' This is not a novel of scenes but a meditation on experience in the French tradition.

One problem is how far Frances is presented ironically. The sharpening of her self-knowledge often seems excessively depreciatory, while her bedazzlement by the aura and gusto of the Frasers can hardly be shared by the reader: we can't look at them, and the author doesn't give them marvellous things to say—they are just abominable. It is hard to know whether this is because the writer's early experience of them is constantly attended by the sadism of revenge or whether she just cannot capture in words what makes them so fascinating. (p. 23)