Sarah Goodrum

Jon McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, focuses on one block in a city street and one horrible event of the recent past, the details of which are concealed until the end of the book. McGregor reveals this place from two points of view first, through a young woman who was a witness to the event in question. The second point of view is that of the neighborhood itself, an all-seeing consciousness that seems to arise from the silences and sounds of the block and looks into the visible and interior worlds of its inhabitants.

Through this lens, the reader sees that horrible day, beginning with college kids who drift home at dawn from the clubs and moving forward, through morning tea, children going out to play, a lonely man collecting urban artifacts, a couple in their bedroom, people with regrets, fears and secrets. What weaves these people together and turns a collected heap of discrete activities into a cohesive narrative is the fast-approaching terrible event. We are drawn, with dread, toward the inevitable moment when the curtains will be pulled back and we will witness this occurrence for ourselves.

The writing here is absolutely resplendent, the work of a true seer, who does for urban England what John Cheever did for Westchester County. McGregor intimately understands his subjects and portrays them in all their specificity, their poetry and their shortcomings. He paints his setting with achingly vivid detail and attention, avoiding broad strokes. McGregor has rewritten the rules of structure and dramatic action, letting the drama of the unknown event seep backward into the entire day that preceded it. The reader has the chance to do what no unknowing human can: to realize that everything is about to change and to pay informed attention to the way things are just before a critical event, to walk the line between the ordinary and the revelatory. There is a hint of magic realism here, but in this truly singular work of fiction, one ultimately finds something that is simply magically real.

Jennifer Egan's new novel, Look at Me, plumbs the depths of America's obsession with appearance, exploring the interplay between what is real and what is merely perceived.

In a terrible car accident outside her hometown of Rockford, Illinois, Charlotte Swenson is thrown against her windshield, shattering the bones of her face. After surgery, titanium screws support a new face, which looks nothing like the original. Back in New York, Charlotte's life as a fading fashion model, her apartment on the East River, her club-going, artificial lifestyle and her search for the elusive mirrored room of celebrity await the return of a virtual stranger.

As Charlotte attempts to remake (or escape) her life, seeing with the fractured vision of someone straddling two realities, we follow her through a labyrinth of highs and lows, bizarre encounters and unexpected twists that leave her, and us, anticipating what lies around the next corner. She is simultaneously pulled into a detective's search for her missing friend, Z, and coaxed into an Internet venture that presents the lives of both the ordinary and the extraordinary, with the hope of capitalizing on the voyeurism of the American public. Meanwhile, back in Rockford, another struggle is underway one that is, along with the people involved, enigmatically linked with Charlotte's.

Look at Me combines the tautness of a good mystery with the measured, exquisitely articulated detail and emotional landscape of the most literary of narratives. Egan, author of The Invisible Circus, creates distinct voices and interweaves them with a dexterity that makes the suspense feel effortlessly created. Her characters a middle-aged high school star buckling under the weight of his view of the world; a plain teenager searching for anything extraordinary; a decent college professor shocked by her ability to deceive, among others assemble on the page like guests at a masquerade party and don their masks (concealing their shadow selves, as Charlotte terms them). As figurative as these disguises can be, Egan is not afraid of being literal a fashion model is, after all, the center of this story about the implications of seeing and being seen.

The characters' lives graze each other and interact with breathtaking electricity and depth. As the novel progresses, a story common to all the characters begins to emerge, moving steadily forward on its course with all the inevitability of Rockford's change from thriving industrial town to Anytown, USA, complete with chain stores and acres of parking lot. This underlying story, call it a kind of progress, involves not only the characters before us; it implicates all people in the modern world.

There is ample food for thought here, and Egan's musings on human identity and its inner scaffolding blossom into a compelling read, sure to leave readers thinking about these very real characters for some time to come.

Sarah Goodrum is a writer and editor in Nashville.