Sara's Face

Last November, a French woman became the first person to receive a face transplant. This novel has either been inspired by that medical development, written and then published with impressive speed, or it is an equally impressive case of art pre-figuring fact.

Would that its literary worth was equally remarkable. Too often it is reminiscent of the soft porn fiction that appears in pre-teen girls’ magazines or in the photo-stories popular in certain tabloids. 17-year-old Sara gets bored with her boyfriend, Mark: ‘I expect he’s breaking his heart for me, but fuck him.’ She isn’t interested in love. She doesn’t want to be pretty. ‘Anyone can be pretty these days.’ What drives her is fame, perhaps as a singer. To her, this doesn’t involve talent. ‘Anyone can have talent. They train you up, they work on your voice. Talent’s cheap.’

When a fabulously wealthy (and famous) rock star offers to take her under his wing and pay for as much cosmetic surgery as she wants, she willingly accepts – moving into his high-security mansion. Once there, she learns the truth behind his fame and his repeated re-inventions of himself and, eventually, what he really wants from her: her face. Were it rooted in convincing realism, this could have been a terrifying and gripping morality tale about the realities of self-harm, self-delusion and a life built on narcissism. Instead, a variety of ghosts, an unconvincingly mad scientist and other implausibilities are dragged into a story which (provided you can suspend disbelief) is gripping enough.