Katharina's husband isn't coming home for the weekend--again--so she's on her own. When their chaotic daughter Helli has a nosebleed, Kat has to dash off to school to pick her up.

Then their son, Alex, announces he's bringing his new girlfriend home for the first time. Kat's best friend from college is coming around tonight too, and she's wondering if she should try to seduce him-but first she needs to do the shopping, the vacuuming and the laundry, deal with an exploding clothes- dryer, find their neighbor's severed thumb in the front yard and catch a couple of escaped rodents.

When she's got all that sorted, perhaps she'll have time to think about the thing she's been trying not to think about-the lump she's just found in her breast. Because you can't just die and leave a huge mess for someone else to clean up-can you? And wasn't there supposed to be more to life than this?

Mareike Kr gel lives in Schleswig-Holstein with her husband and their two children. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Friedrich Hebbel Prize. Look at Me is her fourth novel, and the first to be translated into English.