From the author of Somewhere Towards the End and Stet, the esteemed memoirist and editor Diana Athill’s only novel is an unflinching look at love and betrayal through the story of a young woman finding herself in 1950s London.

England, in the mid-1950s. Meg Bailey has always aspired to live a respectable life. With her best friend, Roxane, she moves from secondary school to a preppy art college in Oxford. Under the watchful eye of Roxane’s mother, Mrs. Wheeler, the two girls flourish in Oxfordian society. But Meg constantly longs for more. Not content to stay in Oxford, she finds a job in London. Roxane stays behind and marries Dick, a man of Mrs. Wheeler’s choosing.

As Meg’s independence grows, Dick suddenly appears in London for work. Representing a connection to her past, Meg and Dick’s friendship flourishes, blurring the lines of loyalty between what is and what was in a way that changes life for these three friends forever.

As sharp and startling now as when it was written, Don’t Look at Me Like That is an unflinching and candid book of love and betrayal that encapsulates Diana Athill’s gift of storytelling at its finest.

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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, which is also published by Granta Books, as are five volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, and a novel, Don’t Look At Me Like That. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She lives in London.

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"A well-defined first novel sketching in people and places with a sure touch."

Kirkus Reviews

"There’s a precision and excitement to [Diana Athill’s] writing that makes this timeless tale — that of an illicit affair — candid, sharp, and fresh."

Montréal Centre-Ville Magazine