A surprising number of my favorite books hover around the 200-page mark, and some of these are indisputable classics (“Mrs. Dalloway,” “Notes From Underground,” “The Great Gatsby,” “The Good Soldier”). What’s most remarkable is how much these books can get done in a relatively small space, constraint seeming to paradoxically increase breadth and ambition. In “Look at Me” (1983), Anita Brookner’s third novel, a research librarian named Frances Hinton narrates the story of how she entered the social orbit of a shiny, charming married couple and their friend. Like many of Brookner’s characters, Frances lives a stringent, lonely life that seems a combination of consciously, even proudly, chosen and temperamentally inevitable. Not much happens in the book by way of plot, and not much has to. This is one of the most beautifully written and psychologically penetrating novels you’ll find. (192 pages) — John Williams
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