The Face: Cartography of the Void

Our front window this week is full of faces, in tribute to a new series started by Restless Books: beautiful, inexpensive little books on a subject we all share, but one that defines us most distinctly as individuals. Is your face a mask, or a revelation of your true self? Their first three writers, all novelists, touch on the physical facts of the faces they've been given by ancestry and time, and move to look to the people who gave them that identity: their parents, and their parents' parents, and the societies that look at those faces and make assumptions. There's a tight focus to the subject—you can put a book in your pocket and read it in an hour or two—but also a delicious looseness that comes from seeing where each writer takes the open-ended assignment. You'll find yourself looking at your own face in the mirror and seeing yourself, and others, anew.