The Face: A Time Code

“The Face, as with the best of literary nonfiction, incorporates elements of memoir and essay, conjecture and meditation, allowing the reader to accompany each author as he or she creates a text that is utterly unique and universally affecting. Each book, on its own, is quirky, funny, sad, and profound; taken together, they have much to tell us about the culture at large, the ties that bind, and the truth — painful, hopeful, reassuring, provocative — of our place on the continuum as daughters, sons, and citizens. It’s a brilliant idea: give a bunch of good writers a prompt that is at once personal and political, and you’re bound to send readers running to the mirror, turning this way and that in an effort to reckon with who they are and who they want to be.”

-- Dinah Lenney * Los Angeles Review of Books *

“What stories can a face tell? This is the premise of The Face series from Restless Books, in which authors write an essay using their face as a focal point. Sound crazy? Well wait till you hear how Ruth Ozeki, Zen Buddhist priest and novelist, decided to stare at her face for three uninterrupted hours as the inspiration behind her book. Through this exercise of ‘immersive attention,’ Ozeki writes a fascinating essay-memoir on heritage, ancestors and aging.”

-- Sarah Ládíp?` Manyika * O