Official Review: "Faces" by Diane Winger
Posted: 01 Aug 2013, 08:45
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "FACES (a novel)" by Diane Winger.]
Faces is a novel about a woman, Jessie, who suffers a climbing accident, and develops prosopagnosia, or face blindness. This is a condition where the person cannot remember the faces of people. Somehow, someone learns of Jessie's situation, and she becomes involved in a shady proposition. Her inability to recognize but a few, really familiar faces proves to be extremely helpful to a scheme that has been forming in her workplace. Jessie works at DenDev, a consulting firm located in Denver, Colorado. She is a computer science grad, who works mostly in programming and web design for the companies DenDev consults.
Jessie has to learn, in a brutal way, to trust her gut feelings, and to rely on her other four senses, to be able to continue with er work an personal life. Are the people she meets strangers or friends? Did conversations and meetings take place, or did the head trauma she had because of her accident affect more than her ability to recognize faces? At first a challenge, her prosopagnosia becomes a battle against her wits and judgementthat could even put her life in jeopardy.
Diane Winger, the author, is a rock climbing enthusast that lived most of her life in Denver. With the help of her husband, Charlie, she has written several guidebooks for climbing and photographing various spots in Colorado. All her knowledge and passion for the sport and lifestyle must have inspired her to write this first novel, Faces.
I rated the book 3 out of 4 stars because it lacked description, mainly in the beginning. In my opinion, he characters were not properly introduced; I was shoved into them and the story. Also, it seemed to me as if you needed to know beforehand about the main topics in the story, mainly because it did not explain to one person the rock-climbing scene. As the medical terms were introduced, I seemed to think of a general description from an online encyclopedia, instead of a normal conversation with a medical professional.
On the more positive side, it was refreshing to see a completely different topic for a fiction book, with no supernatural entities like vampires, werewolves, and the sort. Even though the beginning was a little, after the first 50 pages or so, it gradually got more and more interesting. From the halfway point on, I had to consciously stop reading to get on with my day. I would recommend it to those persistent readers that don't mind a little slow introduction, because it really pays off in the end.
***
Buy "FACES (a novel)" on Amazon
Faces is a novel about a woman, Jessie, who suffers a climbing accident, and develops prosopagnosia, or face blindness. This is a condition where the person cannot remember the faces of people. Somehow, someone learns of Jessie's situation, and she becomes involved in a shady proposition. Her inability to recognize but a few, really familiar faces proves to be extremely helpful to a scheme that has been forming in her workplace. Jessie works at DenDev, a consulting firm located in Denver, Colorado. She is a computer science grad, who works mostly in programming and web design for the companies DenDev consults.
Jessie has to learn, in a brutal way, to trust her gut feelings, and to rely on her other four senses, to be able to continue with er work an personal life. Are the people she meets strangers or friends? Did conversations and meetings take place, or did the head trauma she had because of her accident affect more than her ability to recognize faces? At first a challenge, her prosopagnosia becomes a battle against her wits and judgementthat could even put her life in jeopardy.
Diane Winger, the author, is a rock climbing enthusast that lived most of her life in Denver. With the help of her husband, Charlie, she has written several guidebooks for climbing and photographing various spots in Colorado. All her knowledge and passion for the sport and lifestyle must have inspired her to write this first novel, Faces.
I rated the book 3 out of 4 stars because it lacked description, mainly in the beginning. In my opinion, he characters were not properly introduced; I was shoved into them and the story. Also, it seemed to me as if you needed to know beforehand about the main topics in the story, mainly because it did not explain to one person the rock-climbing scene. As the medical terms were introduced, I seemed to think of a general description from an online encyclopedia, instead of a normal conversation with a medical professional.
On the more positive side, it was refreshing to see a completely different topic for a fiction book, with no supernatural entities like vampires, werewolves, and the sort. Even though the beginning was a little, after the first 50 pages or so, it gradually got more and more interesting. From the halfway point on, I had to consciously stop reading to get on with my day. I would recommend it to those persistent readers that don't mind a little slow introduction, because it really pays off in the end.
***
Buy "FACES (a novel)" on Amazon