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Review: Look, Zan Romanoff

Lulu Shapiro is rather famous on Snapchat Flash, not least because of the video she took of herself kissing another girl — the video that led to her breakup with her boyfriend Owen. In the aftermath of going viral, Lulu has hidden in plain sight, shutting herself off from her real life friends while creating an image on Not!Snapchat of a perfect life of elegant parties and beautifully framed selfies. But at one of those parties, she meets Cass, who takes her to spend time at her rich friend Ryan’s new work-in-progress, The Hotel. No phones are allowed at the Hotel, and Lulu only has to be herself (whatever that means).

Look, by Zan Romanoff

When Grace and the Fever came out and we interviewed Zan Romanoff for podcast, she mentioned Eve Babitz as one of her favorite writers. I eventually bought Slow Days, Fast Company at City Lights bookstore and read it, which means I am now qualified to notice the influence of Eve Babitz on Look. Even writing a synopsis of this book feels deceptive in a sense, because — like Slow Days, Fast CompanyLook is far more about mood and lifestyle than it is about having a premise and doing a plot. That isn’t to say that Look is unfriendly to non-Los Angeles people, or even that it spends much time describing the vistas of L.A. I couldn’t identify a single L.A. landmark from having read Look, but I felt very keenly the mood of the city, and the sense of what it’s like for Lulu to be a person in this place that belongs so much to the movies.

As the title suggests, the idea of being looked at is very central to this book. Though Lulu isn’t particularly involved in Hollywood herself, the milieu of movie-making surrounds her and deeply informs her life. Perhaps even more than I was as a kid, she’s aware that she exists to be looked at. Her presence on Not!Snapchat revolves around that idea of being observed. Having lost control of the narrative of her own life when her kissing-a-girl video went viral, she wants to control what elements of her are seen — not just by the world of the internet, but even by her closest loved ones. Look is a book about the state of being a girl, the ways that being beautiful and being observed inform girlness, and the elements of personhood that are left out when the male gaze is given cultural primacy.

If that sounds a bit heavy, it’s — honestly a pretty fair representation of what Zan Romanoff’s getting up to in this book. It does lean toward the melancholy, despite having lots of snappy, funny dialogue. As in Grace and the Fever, Romanoff writes very deftly about relationships. Throughout this book Lulu is adjusting to the idea of needing other people who don’t look at her but see her; which of course requires her to be willing to be truly seen, in all her messy unresolvedness. The romance between Lulu and Cass is very lovely, but Romanoff doesn’t punt on any of these fictional relationships. Pretty much any time Lulu has a real conversation with someone, she finds that they’re unique, complex people with interior lives she knows nothing about — it’s just a question of whether she’s willing to take the time to see them.

As with Grace and the Fever, Look is a book that recognizes the pitfalls of being extremely online, as well as its joys and benefits. Lulu does end up (spoilers I guess? but this isn’t a book that hugely admits of spoilers, in my opinion) quitting Not!Snapchat, but her decision to do that isn’t a referendum on the value of the affordances of Snapchat. Selfies aren’t the problem; exploitation of vulnerable young people for corporate profit is the problem. So, like, the same moral as for all of social media.

This is Zan Romanoff’s third YA novel, and I have to say I think she just keeps getting better. Look is incisive and compassionate, angry and feminist and forgiving. A really wonderful book.