PositiveThe FaceHer characters are not only on the edges of a transformation, they’re also on the fringes of normality, permanently quarantined on the opposite side of the white-picket-fence ideal ... These are voyeuristic stories inside our very real, very unjust world, in a language that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality ... This intensity does become heavy-handed in a few of Yuknavitch’s pieces: so earnest in their mission of eliciting empathy (and its partner emotion, guilt), that the delight of doing a reader’s detective-work – discovering what is unsaid, piecing themes together – disappears ... Luckily in all the misery within this collection, a sense of hope prevails.
