Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
0 0
Download high-resolution image Look inside

Don't Look at Me Like That

Author Diana Athill
Afterword by Helen Oyeyemi
Look inside
Paperback
$16.95 US
New York Review Books | NYRB Classics
On sale Aug 15, 2023 | 192 Pages | 9781681376110
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats
A candid novel of love, betrayal, and friendship about a young woman who breaks with her peers, moves to London, and begins a shocking affair.

“When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me, and it wasn’t far from true” confesses Meg Bailey at the start of Don’t Look at Me Like That. Coming of age in the mid-1940s, Meg finds herself to be out of place wherever she finds herself: She is a nonbeliever in her father’s parsonage, an artistic dreamer at her stuffy boarding school, a provincial in the worldly circles frequented by her best friend Roxane and Dick, Roxane’s future husband. It is only when Meg, newly graduated from art school, moves into an untidy London rooming house alive with the sounds of crying children, sparring lovers, and even foreigners, that she begins to feel at home. But ties to the past are not so easily severed, and Meg must disentangle herself from her troubled intimacy with Roxane and Dick before she can begin to start “living in her own way.”

Don’t Look at Me Like That is the only novel by the famed memoirist and editor Diana Athill, who died in 2019 at the age of one hundred and one. At once clear-eyed and compassionate, it is a story of making mistakes and making a life.
Diana Athill (1917–2019) helped André 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 memoir Stet. She is the author of seven further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, Alive, Alive Oh!, A Florence Diary, and a collection of letters, Instead of a Book. Her only novel, Don’t Look At Me Like That, was first published in 1967. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE.
 
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of eight novels, including White Is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award; Mr. Fox, which won a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and What is Not Yours is Not Yours, which won a 2016 PEN Open Book award. Her most recent novels are Gingerbread and Peaces.
Diana Athill View titles by Diana Athill

About

A candid novel of love, betrayal, and friendship about a young woman who breaks with her peers, moves to London, and begins a shocking affair.

“When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me, and it wasn’t far from true” confesses Meg Bailey at the start of Don’t Look at Me Like That. Coming of age in the mid-1940s, Meg finds herself to be out of place wherever she finds herself: She is a nonbeliever in her father’s parsonage, an artistic dreamer at her stuffy boarding school, a provincial in the worldly circles frequented by her best friend Roxane and Dick, Roxane’s future husband. It is only when Meg, newly graduated from art school, moves into an untidy London rooming house alive with the sounds of crying children, sparring lovers, and even foreigners, that she begins to feel at home. But ties to the past are not so easily severed, and Meg must disentangle herself from her troubled intimacy with Roxane and Dick before she can begin to start “living in her own way.”

Don’t Look at Me Like That is the only novel by the famed memoirist and editor Diana Athill, who died in 2019 at the age of one hundred and one. At once clear-eyed and compassionate, it is a story of making mistakes and making a life.

Author

Diana Athill (1917–2019) helped André 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 memoir Stet. She is the author of seven further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, Alive, Alive Oh!, A Florence Diary, and a collection of letters, Instead of a Book. Her only novel, Don’t Look At Me Like That, was first published in 1967. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE.
 
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of eight novels, including White Is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award; Mr. Fox, which won a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and What is Not Yours is Not Yours, which won a 2016 PEN Open Book award. Her most recent novels are Gingerbread and Peaces.
Diana Athill View titles by Diana Athill

Additional formats

Other Books by this Author

Related Articles

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month
Psychology

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

For National Depression Education and Awareness Month in October, we are sharing a collection of titles that educates and informs on depression, including personal stories from those who have experienced depression and topics that range from causes and symptoms of depression to how to develop coping mechanisms to battle depression.

Read more

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

Psychology
Literature

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

In celebration of the Halloween season, we are sharing horror books that are aligned with the themes of the holiday: the sometimes unknown and scary creatures and witches. From classic ghost stories and popular novels that are celebrated today, in literature courses and beyond, to contemporary stories about the monsters that hide in the dark, our list

Read more

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

Literature
History Gender and Sexuality Studies

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

For LGBTQIA+ History Month in October, we’re celebrating the shared history of individuals within the community and the importance of the activists who have fought for their rights and the rights of others. We acknowledge the varying and diverse experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community that have shaped history and have led the way for those

Read more

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

History Gender and Sexuality Studies
Subscribe

Penguin Random House Higher Education

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)