Read an Excerpt from Christopher Coe’s ‘I Look Divine’

Author: William Johnson

November 10, 2013

In October, Bruno Gmünder released a new edition of Christopher Coe’s beloved novel I Look Divine, with a new introduction from author David Leavitt. Initially published in 1987, the novel is a lyrical portrait of the joys and pitfalls of living a life obsessed with beauty and pleasure.

From the publisher:

Nicholas is beautiful, wealthy and hopelessly vain. With his older brother in tow, he jets from one glamorous scene to another: Rome, Madrid, Mexico. Wherever he goes, he seeks the admiration of other men, until one day—his beauty faded—he winds up dead, the victim of unknown circumstances. His brother is left to pick up and pieces and figure out how Nicholas came to his untimely end.

Christopher Coe was a writer, photographer and cabaret singer. He lived in Paris and New York City. Coe’s first novel, I Look Divine, was published in 1987, his second, Such Times, in 1993. His style has been called “reminiscent of both Oscar Wilde’s and Marcel Proust’s late writings” (Publishers Weekly). Christopher Coe died of AIDS in 1994.

Read an excerpt from the novel here.