Faces

by Diane Winger

What if you could no longer recognize faces?

Following a head injury from a rock climbing accident, Jessica faces a disturbing future where everyone looks like a stranger. When a team of embezzlers stumbles upon her diagnosis of prosopagnosia – face blindness – they seize the opportunity to entangle her in their scheme. As she discovers the scam and alerts the authorities, she becomes a target in a masquerade far more dangerous than the extreme sports she loves.

Genres: Fiction

238 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

I describe myself as a “retired software geek” who loves hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, camping, and cross-country skiing when I'm not reading, writing, or watching cat videos.
I'm a passionate volunteer with several organizations which focus on literacy projects in my community.
My husband, Charlie, and I are co-authors of several guidebooks on outdoor recreation. I was born and raised in Denver and we currently reside in western Colorado. I write fiction featuring strong, adventurous female protagonists.
Please follow me on BookBub to receive notices of new titles, books on sale, and for book recommendations by other authors. http://tinyurl.com/FollowDiane

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great, quick mystery! I got so involved in reading this one that it was hard to put down. I had never heard of this disease and was glad they went into so much detail about it in the book. Face blindness or prosopagnosia is a very scary disorder.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in the book because I have a mild form of prosopagnosia. In this book, a woman has an accident that destroys her ability to recognize faces.

The author herself has prosopagnosia, so she spends a lot of time describing it. She also spends a lot of time describing the art of wall climbing, so I assume that's one of her hobbies.

Ms. Winger's sincerity and desire to educate are apparent, but so is her pedestrian skills as a storyteller. The characters feel lifeless, more like imagined characters from a book than real people. The plot is bland and fairly predictable; even though the book is short, I kept wanting her to just get on with it. There is none of the ingenuity of a good suspense novel, and the writing is pedestrian.

I have a certain we-feeling with Ms. Winger, since we have the same difficulty. That's actually why I'm reviewing her book her but not on Amazon; I don't want to interfere too much with her sales. But the book is really pretty dull.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting combination of an unusual handicap and a highly technical crime. Well-written, too.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I debated how to rate this book. I'll start with the bad. Faces is a first novel, and it reads a little slow and jerky. There are bones of an intriguing romantic suspense novel inside, but the execution doesn't quite live up to the promise.

On the other hand, the book really excels at intriguing me about two aspects of the heroine's world. First there's rock-climbing, which I'm not particularly interested in but found intriguing anyway simply because of the way the author intertwines the skill set into the story. More interesting was the explanation of face blindness, a condition I almost suffer from. (Took the online quizzes mentioned in the book and showed up as way below average but not quite bad enough to get a diagnosis.) It's a fascinating disability for a character to have and really works into the mystery/thriller aspect of the book, and also into her romantic and personal relationships. Plus, it resonated with my own experiences.

Overall, I definitely recommend Faces to the thoughtful reader and will look forward to trying out other books by this author. I suspect her writing will improve and (hopefully) her fresh, different look at the world will stay the same.

[Kelly Glenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book, a female rock climber and a life changing accident but the writing was rough. It was a quick read but very predictable and the conversations between characters was like a B movie. I did appreciate the author using a condition she has to shed light on the difficulties with face blindness but some of the things that happened were unbelievable and unrealistic. It had a good premise but the writing was dull.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found this book was more about rock climbing than the actual story. Started out good and then went downhill. Some scenarios in the book was too good to be true, almost idiotic like. Dull, boring, a struggle to finish.

[Cristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent

The book was decent but I was pretty disappointed with how nice and easily the ending wrapped up. No surprises. It was okay.

[Brenda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my personal series on prosopagnosia in the literature. I was particularly interested because the author is face blind, this is her first novel, and I read a review that said that she made the "tell but not show" mistake. And yes, the book has many examples of this common mistake. The obvious is often stated. Rock climbing and programming are part of the story, but the way they are described made me feel I was reading a technical manual. It was hard to connect with the characters. I struggled to keep reading. But I wanted to get a good sense of things to avoid when writing. In this sense, the book was useful.

There was an analogy of recognising faces with recognising rocks. That was interesting.

[Java Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story about Jessica, a computer programmer and rock climber. She has a climbing accident and due to mild brain damage loses her ability to recognize faces -- face blindness, or prosopagnosia. The bad guys are able to take advantage of her new disability by roping her into a money skimming scheme by getting her to think she's working on a secret project, but who has been hoodwinked into programming a client hoax. But Jessica is diligent and follows up her work, discovering that the secret project could be illegal.

Yes, it's illegal. The police are soon involved, and these "anonymous" bad guys are threatening Jessica to recant her testimony and confess that it was all her plan from the beginning. The police aren't stupid, and figure out quickly that Jessica's testimony is the truth and what they're getting from other interested parties are obviously involved, and lying about her part in this mess.

As a programmer, Jessica explains many programming issues that I admit to having skimmed over. As a climber, Jessica explains the specifics of rock climbing. What I got was the differences in tension, from casual climbing with friends versus other times when the climbs are more dangerous. As a sufferer of face blindness, jessica explains by words and by example how difficult life becomes when no one looks familiar.

While I enjoyed this book very much, the story was a good one, it has one of my fiction pet peeves. Jessica is the only important character, and all of the peripheral characters are mere window dressing. This book is the first in a series about Jessica, and I am hoping that the author makes her characters more rounded out.