My Face in the Light

De: Martha Schabas

Narrado por: Sofia Banzhaf

A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2022

2022 Toronto Book Award, Long-listed

“My mother is an artist and I am a liar. Or, if I scratch the surface, my mother is a sick woman and I am an actress . . .”

Justine feels uneasy in her marriage, her theatre career and her relationship with her estranged mother, a famous painter. An intuitive and uncanny mimic, distinguished by a pronounced scar across her forehead (the result of a childhood accident), Justine has made acting the centre of her life since she was a teenager, but lately her outwardly charmed life in Toronto has begun to ring false. After a disastrous audition in London, England, a chance encounter with a stranger leads to an unorthodox business proposition that would allow Justine to abandon the world she knows indefinitely. As the complications and contradictions of leaving a life behind swell to the point of crisis, Justine must confront the collateral damage of a traumatic, long-repressed past.

In psychologically astute prose full of provocative insights, My Face in the Light is a piercing, poignant novel about truth in art and identity. It’s the story of a young woman owning up to the lies she’s fallen in love with, and figuring out if she can still recognize herself when she finally lets them go.

©2022 Martha Schabas (P)2022 Knopf Canada

Reseñas de la Crítica

2022, Toronto Book Award, Long-listed

“Martha Schabas has written a novel like cut crystal; clear, crisp prose that, when held up to the light of careful contemplation, reflects back many-hued revelations. She is a writer of astonishing intelligence.” (Jordan Tannahill, Giller Prize-nominated author of The Listeners)

“Brilliant, provocative, and moving, My Face in the Light asks us to confront the boundaries we construct and the ones we fail to see.At once intimate and sweeping in its exploration of power, identity, art, and love, it dazzles us with the artistry of its characters, the simple beauty of its sentences, and its well-wrought form.” (Johanna Skibsrud, Giller Prize-winning author of The Sentimentalists)