From the author of Somewhere Towards the End and Stet, the late great Diana Athill's only novel, about love, betrayal and a young woman finding oneself in 1950s London.
Diana Athill was born in 1917. She helped Andre Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill's distinguished career as an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet (Granta Books, 2011), along with five further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, a novel, Don't Look at Me Like That, and a collection of letters, Instead of a Book. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She died in January 2019.
[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
*Guardian*
Don't Look at Me Like That evokes a London of rain; grimy bedsits,
plush, hushed restaurants, illicitness and despair...Athill
skilfully 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
*Sunday Times*
A tale of love and betrayal
*Monocle*
A short, sharp shock... beautifully observed... nuanced and true...
Don't Look At Me Like That deserves to become a classic of bedsit
lit... spare and unsparing... I loved this book. Meg fascinates...
Read this book in your teens and twenties, and think: "Oh god,
that's me." Read it later and think: "Thank god, that's over"
*Times*
Diana Athill was a force for good in the world of books, a champion
for women wanting to make their own way, unconfined by the
pressures of society. Her openness and honesty made readers feel
that they were truly seen and understood; that our lives might just
be as remarkable as hers
*Harper’s Bazaar*
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