Melvin Burgess, controversial author of Junk and Doing It, is back with a story of one troubled teenage girl, the eponymous Sara, and a rock 'n' roll star, Jonathon Heat, whose mind is all shook up.
Heat, an aging rock star possibly sketched with Michael Jackson in mind, is obsessed with the chimera of eternal youth. Employing the services of notorious plastic surgeon Wayland Kaye, he has gone under the knife so many times that his facial tissue has practically disintegrated: In the words of one of the rock star's former aides, his face looks "like a bag of butcher's meat". In order to hide the hideousness underneath, he takes to wearing a mask à la The Phantom of the Opera (in one of the novel's most ironic moments, the mask ends up earning Heat millions via the channels of fan merchandising).
As for Sara, she is an ambitious 17-year-old girl from Manchester who nurtures the dream to "become famous for being herself rather than for any skills she might cultivate". Like many girls her age, she suffers from body dysmorphia. Dieting is the order of the day ("I can turn air into fat," she tells her boyfriend early on) and she plans to undergo cosmetic surgery as soon as she can. As if that was not enough, she's also into self-harming. Following an "accident" involving a red-hot iron and the left side of her face, Sara winds up in hospital, where she is kept under observation for a couple of days.
Here she meets Jonathon Heat, who is visiting the sick children in her ward. Heat is immediately attracted to Sara, or rather, to her face, which bears an uncanny resemblance to his own erstwhile visage.
Before you know it, Sara is being groomed for stardom at Home Manor Farm, Heat's sprawling country estate. She is also booked for an operation "innocently meant" to correct the effects of her accident and fix whatever "defects" her young body might have. And guess who the surgeon doing the operation is? Sinister Dr Kaye, I hear you say? Douze points! As the big day looms nearer, funny things are afoot: The ghost of a faceless girl is seen ambling along the mansion's corridors, people disappear, mysterious rooms are stumbled upon. And of course, Heat gets weirder by the hour.
Sara's Face is told by an unnamed narrator, a "novelist doing a journalist's job" who might or might not be Mr Burgess himself (both Mr Burgess and the narrator of Sara's Face have written a book called Lady). Like many of Mr Burgess's previous novels, the story unfolds in polyphonic style. The bulk is told in third person omniscient as the narrator pieces together the grisly events as recounted by the parties involved. Then there are chapters which are basically transcripts of Sara's self-made video journal. These start off on a funny tone (the girl's constant bitching about how fat she looks in the mirror is hilarious) but end up being quite creepy.
The main problem with Sara's Face is that right from the introductory chapter the reader is told what is going to happen: Heat ends up in jail and something terrible befalls Sara. Because of this, the journey towards the climax ends up being fairly uninvolving: Blame it on the intentional journalistic clichés and flat prose in which the novel is written, or the wackily stereotypical characters (ego-centric rock gods, mad scientists, opportunistic parents - you name it and you got it) who populate the story. Still, fans of Mr Burgess will hardly complain about these shortcomings. De gustibus non est disputandum, as one of my lecturers would say.
• n Mr Stagno is a freelance writer and full-time university student. Had face transplants and time travel been possible, he certainly would not have minded swapping mugs with a young Marlon Brando.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Merlin Library Ltd.
Heat, an aging rock star possibly sketched with Michael Jackson in mind, is obsessed with the chimera of eternal youth. Employing the services of notorious plastic surgeon Wayland Kaye, he has gone under the knife so many times that his facial tissue has practically disintegrated: In the words of one of the rock star's former aides, his face looks "like a bag of butcher's meat". In order to hide the hideousness underneath, he takes to wearing a mask à la The Phantom of the Opera (in one of the novel's most ironic moments, the mask ends up earning Heat millions via the channels of fan merchandising).
As for Sara, she is an ambitious 17-year-old girl from Manchester who nurtures the dream to "become famous for being herself rather than for any skills she might cultivate". Like many girls her age, she suffers from body dysmorphia. Dieting is the order of the day ("I can turn air into fat," she tells her boyfriend early on) and she plans to undergo cosmetic surgery as soon as she can. As if that was not enough, she's also into self-harming. Following an "accident" involving a red-hot iron and the left side of her face, Sara winds up in hospital, where she is kept under observation for a couple of days.
Here she meets Jonathon Heat, who is visiting the sick children in her ward. Heat is immediately attracted to Sara, or rather, to her face, which bears an uncanny resemblance to his own erstwhile visage.
Before you know it, Sara is being groomed for stardom at Home Manor Farm, Heat's sprawling country estate. She is also booked for an operation "innocently meant" to correct the effects of her accident and fix whatever "defects" her young body might have. And guess who the surgeon doing the operation is? Sinister Dr Kaye, I hear you say? Douze points! As the big day looms nearer, funny things are afoot: The ghost of a faceless girl is seen ambling along the mansion's corridors, people disappear, mysterious rooms are stumbled upon. And of course, Heat gets weirder by the hour.
Sara's Face is told by an unnamed narrator, a "novelist doing a journalist's job" who might or might not be Mr Burgess himself (both Mr Burgess and the narrator of Sara's Face have written a book called Lady). Like many of Mr Burgess's previous novels, the story unfolds in polyphonic style. The bulk is told in third person omniscient as the narrator pieces together the grisly events as recounted by the parties involved. Then there are chapters which are basically transcripts of Sara's self-made video journal. These start off on a funny tone (the girl's constant bitching about how fat she looks in the mirror is hilarious) but end up being quite creepy.
The main problem with Sara's Face is that right from the introductory chapter the reader is told what is going to happen: Heat ends up in jail and something terrible befalls Sara. Because of this, the journey towards the climax ends up being fairly uninvolving: Blame it on the intentional journalistic clichés and flat prose in which the novel is written, or the wackily stereotypical characters (ego-centric rock gods, mad scientists, opportunistic parents - you name it and you got it) who populate the story. Still, fans of Mr Burgess will hardly complain about these shortcomings. De gustibus non est disputandum, as one of my lecturers would say.
• n Mr Stagno is a freelance writer and full-time university student. Had face transplants and time travel been possible, he certainly would not have minded swapping mugs with a young Marlon Brando.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Merlin Library Ltd.