Thomas J. Hubschman

Look At Me Now tells the story of a woman in the act of leaving her husband of nearly 25 years, how she finds the strength to go, and what led her to leave in the first place. The narrative is diary-style, as Deirdre finds herself writing down her thoughts and reminiscences, and describing her actions in this most fraught time of her life. This is an effective device, though I did feel that it led to some distance between the reader and Deirdre, and perhaps some short-handing of events that could have been more fully described. For all the time that Deirdre spends describing her feelings, I never really felt the immediacy of her emotions due to the matter-of-fact way that she describes them. This isn’t necessarily a flaw, but overall I do prefer to empathise more readily with protagonists, even those who, like Deirdre, are not always easy to like.

Longer thoughts are at my blog.… (meer)

I agree with some of the other Early Reviewers; I wanted to like this book, but I found it odd that a man wrote a book about a woman who is leaving an abusive relationship. Leaving such a relationship is probably one of the hardest decisions a woman must make. I expected Deirdre to have more substance as a character; just what substance has been hard for me to pinpoint.

Deirdre tries to find her way in the world after living with an abusive husband. She also facing the resentment she feels towards her mentally ill son. She acknowledges her husband's mistakes and gains a better understanding of the reasons for his abusive behavior and I would like to think she has arrived at forgiveness. However, I am not convinced that Deirdre is completely healed from her bad marriage and her resentment. After years and years of living with an abusive relationship it is hard to get her life back.

The book is not a bad read; it takes very little effort and it actually reminds me of some other fiction about flawed, abusive males. I would recommend it.… (meer)

This novel opens with Deirdre making the final preparations to leave her husband. He has been mentally and emotionally abusive to her for years but she has been trapped in her marriage by her feelings that she deserved her situation after getting pregnant and having to marry while still in high school. Deirdre's life has been a fairly pitiable one; she's essentially friendless, stuck in a dead-end job, trying to extricate herself from a loveless marriage, distant from her emotionally frozen mother, even unconnected from her lover. Certainly this all should combine to make the reader cheer her on as she starts a new life for herself. But it doesn't. Perhaps it is her all pervading depression leaking through or perhaps it is the small ways in which Deirdre is not entirely convincing as a woman but connecting with this character is difficult. Her life is so dreary that reading about it becomes a dispiriting adventure. And Deirdre's odd decisions, to pretend a closeness to the paraplegic wife of her super, a woman she's never met, her decision to visit and care for her abusive ex-husband after he lands in the hospital, and other assorted small choices like these do not serve to make the reader understand her better but only add some movement into an essentially stagnant story. Over all, I was greatly disappointed by this book.… (meer)

This is the story of Deidre ending her abusive, violent marriage and reclaiming her life. She has to sneak her belongings out of the house, bag by bag, keeping them at work so as not to alert her controling husband (whom she always calls by his full name, Tim Davis) to her planned escape. But he still turns up at her workplace, threatening by his mere presence. Deidre has a fractured and co-dependent relationship with her schizoprhenic son, both blaming him for not leaving her marriage sooner, and using his mental instability as an excuse for staying.

Having witnessed my mother leave a violent relationship and her very real and justified fears about the consequences of doing so, I can testify to the verisimilitude of Deidre's situation; I found her a very real and engaging character in an extremely well written book. Highly recommended.… (meer)