Reviews for Face

The average rating for Face based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-11 00:00:00 Edward Edmonds Never has the one-line GR description been less effective in conveying what a book actually feel like. Instead look at this old cover image. The artist gets it: There it is, in all its modernist-symbolist clarity -- a story of visages, masks, and identity in bare and gleaming terms. The story streamlines into more linear, less conceptual space as it goes, unfortunately, but the final episodes dealing with reconstruction of the self/face/identity are tethered in a cold brutal physicality that makes them highly memorable. This came to me by an odd path: after cat-sitting, my mom left this on my shelf, convinced she'd borrowed it from me in the past. She hadn't, and I'd never eve heard of this or Pineda. But this is, in fact, right at home on my shelf now.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-13 00:00:00 Glen Rich My Classic Read for March 2019 is Cecile Pineda's Face, a book about identity. First published in 1985, Cecile Pineda's slim and stunning novel Face was highly acclaimed and has a longevity that places it as a modern classic, an American Academy of Arts and Letters prize winner, and a finalist for the prestigious Neustadt Prize in 2013. Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee has called it one of the most haunting books he's ever read. Based on the true story of a man who was disfigured in an accident, we follow the fictional life of Helio Cara (a name that ironically could be taken to mean "sun or day love") a man living in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Helio rushes, or tries to, to his dying mother's bedside but falls off a hillside (a metaphorical cliff). Surviving his accident, he is rendered faceless in that he is so disfigured that everyone rejects him and his identity, home, livelihood and all his friends, are lost to him. His situation is so dire he cannot go out and cannot bear to be seen. The light of day brings only sorrow, cruelty and rejection. Over time, Helio rebuilds himself, literally rebuilding his face, with needle and thread, and novocaine for pain. Face remains a landmark in Latin American fiction, with Pineda being one of the first US-based Latina writers to land a contract with a major US publishing house. It is also a stunning novel about what makes us who we are, about how others see us, and how we see ourselves. What defines us? Is it what we do, the choices we make, or the face we show the world? A fascinating novel, as fresh today as it was more than thirty years ago, I cannot recommend this jewel of Hispanic literature highly enough.