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In Faceless , Genni Gunn explores "the impulse for the edge," a magnetic field between the gloss of the topside world and the grit of the world beneath. Both these landscapes are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced, where identity itself is arbitrary. Impersonation, even of oneself, is the rule. In a piano bar, the musician is a chameleon adapting to the faceless men who sit around her piano. The faceless cadavers in the notorious BodyWorlds exhibits stalk the rooms while, in Gunn’s title poem, an ordinary French woman finds redemption in the world’s first face transplant after being mauled in a strange accident by her pet dog. To be anonymous in today’s urban places is to be free yet isolated, to be in a constant flux of longing for and fear of "the dead and beating heart," both in one’s own breast and those faltering in the chests of others. The countless faces that Gunn confronts on the streets of the city or behind closed doors make her important new book such a compelling read-as does the "delicious anxiety" she sees hanging in ecstatic, sometimes terrifying suspense in the liminal spaces between.
About this Author
Genni Gunn is a writer, musician and translator. Born in Trieste, Italy, she came to Canada when she was eleven. She has published nine books: three novels -- Solitaria, Tracing Iris and Thrice Upon a Time, two short story collections -- Hungers and On The Road, two poetry collections -- Faceless and Mating in Captivity, and translated from the Italian two collections of poems. Two of her books have also been translated into Italian. Her work has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the John Glassco Translation Award and the Gerald Lampert Award, and her novel Tracing Iris was made into a feature film. Her opera Alternate Visions premiered in Montreal in 2007. Before she turned to writing full-time, Genni toured Canada extensively with a variety of bands (bass guitar, piano and vocals). She lives in Vancouver.
Reviews
"Few contemporary writers can match Gunn in irony and searing characterization."--The Star "Gunn is the ultimate connoisseur of language, giving each reader a taste, using the medium of her art to explore the range of human response."--Quarter After Eight "In her writing, Genni Gunn goes in search of the mother within her, the mother of all literary dreams, the mother that we all want to be and are not. The grace and perseverance with which she follows this missing mother are at the origin of her elegant, impulsive and disciplined writing."--Dacia Maraini in Studi Canadesi
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