Look At Me - By Anita Brookner

"Once a thing is known, it can't never be unknown, it can only be forgotten"...the opening for this book made me reflect for a long time. It's somewhat cliché but it speaks the truth. My mother used to say to always be very careful with what we say and how we say it. For once is out of our mouths it can't never go back. And our mind is a powerful thing. We can replay whatever we want, however we want, over and over again, for as long as we want. So, we should indeed be careful when to express ourselves to others, as we can't never really go back.
People can forgive us, but never forget. That's the power we give them once we manifest ourselves, really.
Look At Me is really about loneliness, in the deepest aspect of it.
As being someone who lived by myself, having no family around, I can - and always will - relate to this book. Fanny has a never ending everyday of the same work on a medical research institute. A place where she's with no doubt the youngest one and where the highlight of the day is Mrs Halloran getting cosy with Dr Simek.
Fanny has no living family and no social life whatsoever. She has Olivia, who very much like her, is introverted and quiet and timid.
It really gets to my core when Fanny tells her panic of getting home - a empty one - for a lame dinner by her self, and to avoid that she watches windows on the commercial areas to have time to pass by.
For the ones who lived it, loneliness is a monster that eats you up bit by bit, and it's a scary business to remember being there and not wanting to go home.
To go anywhere. Inside malls, theatres, anywhere where there's people and other lives to be able to observe and imagine what do they have when they get home to families and friends.
Then there are friends like Alix and Nick. Extravagant people who takes Fanny under they wings as an curious project for entertainment. She's shy and quiet and for a while she's interesting to be around. As as soon as something more exciting pops out, Fanny is kicked out of the group like she'd never existed. And for Fanny, those friends's life style where the kind of life she always dreamed.
But once she's in the outs of they circle, Fanny modestly recollects her little pieces and timidly leaves the scene, back to her empty apartment, back to her empty life.
Although I sincerely would like a happier ending for our Fanny Hinton, I accept this one as something very realistic and relatable. About loneliness at its finest. About people who has no one, and decently try to hide the everyday emptiness, the sadness of every evening, and portraits the facade as normal as possible life, to the outside world.