Product Description

Sarah is going to have a face transplant. She has allowed herself to be drawn into the orbit of a highly manipulative and ruthless pop-star. He is going to take her discarded face to cover his own scarred and damaged one. But, as the time of the operation approaches, those closest to her suspect that Sarah is changing her mind. Is she being pressured into it? Is the wealthy pop-star her benefactor - or her gaoler?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #489187 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review
Genuinely chilling . . . a smart satire for our image-obsessed culture (Telegraph )

Sara's Face is quite unlike anything else I have read this year (Independent )

Ingenious and chilling . . . the narrative gallop will have readers sitting up half the night to finish it (Observer )

Remarkable . . . startling (Publishing News )

Thrilling . . . it stays with you (Guardian )

From the Inside Flap
There’s loads of girls prettier than me. Anyone can look good. Talent – that’s not it, either. Everyone’s got talent. They train you up, they work on your voice. If it’s no good they change it in the studio. Talent’s cheap.'



Sara wants to be famous, and when the legendary rock star Jonathon Heat offers to train her up and pay for her cosmetic surgery, it’s like a dream come true. But what if there's a hidden price? And is Sara willing to pay it …?

About the Author
Melvin Burgess was born in London and brought up in Surrey and Sussex. He has had a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time writer. Before his first novel, he had short stories published and a play broadcast on Radio 4. He is now regarded as one of the best writers in contemporary children's literature.

Customer Reviews

A brave attempt to do something different in the YA genre, but it doesn't come off
Sara's a damaged girl who dreams of fame and fortune. Prone to fantasies, anorexia and self-harming she meets rock star Jonathan Heat at her local hospital after an accident with an iron leaves a triangular scar on her otherwise beautiful face. Heat is disfigured himself - excessive cosmetic surgery having caused his face to collapse in on itself - and he wears a mask when out in public. He takes Sara to his mansion, promising to fix her facial scars and give her other cosmetic surgery that she's convinced she requires to be beautiful. Once at the mansion however, she claims that she can see the ghost of a girl with no face - a girl who otherwise looks exactly like her.

There's too much going on here. Burgess wants this to be a commentary on the obsession with celebrity, beauty and cosmetic surgery but also writes it as a ghost story and alludes to the Bluebeard legend when the novel simply isn't long enough to handle it all satisfactorily. Sara should be a character you can empathise with, but she's so morally ambiguous - telling different stories to different characters - that it's difficult to it's difficult to sympathise with her. Likewise, Heat is a damaged individual in his own right and could be a sympathetic villain, but seen mainly through the eyes of others he is too diffuse to understand and the sinister Dr Kaye who Heat claims was the driving force behind his operations isn't on the page long enough to make an impression.

The narrative style makes it difficult to buy into the story. The central conceit is that Burgess is fictionalising real events that the reader is familiar with, which creates an artificial structure as he has to explain things that the reader should already know and his third person omniscient POV to the overall narration means he's constantly editorialising, drawing in things that happen later or are happening simultaneously elsewhere, which can make the story feel rather disjointed. Some sections recreate video tapes that Sara made and there are interviews with witnesses to the events, but this mish-mash of styles dilutes the story's strength. The epilogue is an attempt to explain things that Burgess was unable to otherwise deal with in the main story arc while the main story ends at a dramatic moment, without any explanation for how it all got resolved.

Not for everyone
Melvin Burgess comes up with an excelent base line plot for this book. Quite obviously influenced by some storys in the media today, Sara's face tells the story of Jonathan Heat, an aging pop star addicted to plastic surgery.

Sara is a girl who people are unsure about. Never having been happy with her face from a young age, she develops a fasination with masks, and assuming other people identitys.

This story is about when Sara and Heats worlds collide and what consequences there are.

The idea of this story is basically good, but the writing of the details was not up to much. It was predictable, and in some places you could just skip a few pages on, as the writing derailed a bit, and waffled on.

A good book is you want to question the idea of plastic surgery, and how it affects todays youth. But not for everyone, especialy if you are looking for a more challenging read.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Jonathon Heat was a famous rock star who had his own compound, surgeons, and assistants. All of the things a rich and famous celebrity would have--and then some. In fact, due to so much cosmetic surgery and experimental procedures, somehow Jonathon's face was destroyed to the point that he wore a mask at all times. With his high celebrity status, wearing a mask became a widespread thing to do. There were all sorts of masks--some with snouts, some with real hair, half-masks, full masks.

Sarah was once an unknown and sometimes self-destructive girl. She had big plans to be famous and was saving for several forms of cosmetic surgery: new breasts, a better face, liposuction later on. It was part of her long-term plans. When Sarah's destructive behavior spiraled out of control, she burned her face with an iron and her mother had her placed in the hospital. Sarah claimed it was an accident, but not everyone was convinced. This is when she met Jonathon Heat. He came to visit children in the hospital, but somehow already knew a great deal about Sarah. He lured Sarah to his compound with the promise of free cosmetic surgery to fix the burn mark.

It was almost Michael Jacksonish the way Jonathon took Sarah in. Sarah moved into his mansion and was his constant companion. The two were constantly photographed together and speculation about their relationship was rampant. However, when readers were exposed to Sarah's video journals, we learn a completely different view of what was really going on. Secret rooms, security cameras covering every inch of the property, and maybe even ghosts. It's very difficult to tell what really happens, what Sarah might be imagining, and what she may even be making up. However, it is obvious there is more to Sarah being a guest at Jonathon Heat's compound than free cosmetic surgery.

The mood of the entire book is eerie. Creepy. There is always something going on that is just not right. It keeps readers wanting to read more because they have to know what is going on and what is going to happen. The whole world that the author, Melvin Burgess, has created will leave you wondering if this type of situation could actually happen in the not-too-distant future. If you want to read a book that will keep you wondering even after you have finished reading it, then you should definitely read SARA'S FACE.

Reviewed by: Dianna Geers