The face of another shows yet kobo abe’s capability in transforming the experience of living in modern time (and also: radically modernized cum capitalized)
Yeah, people’s saying that capitalistic life makes people alienated is brought to its farthest intrepretation in this pocket-friendly novel. A scientist loses his face due to a chemical accident in his lab. At the beginning, he doesn’t find any trouble with it. But later, as his relation with his wife gets colder and worsens by the day, he decides to invent a man-face looking mask. Things get reasonably easy for him since he’s a scientist and knows the basic laws of chemistry (well, fyi, kobo abe himself was a doctor [who refused to open a clinic], remember?)
At this point, readers will find our narrator in a dilemma since he decides not to make a face-mask resembling other than his very own face. A study of the relation between complexion and character is presented quite elegantly here. And in the name of shockability (:d), I refuse to tell you the whole story, hehehe…
Still more, this book is presented in a quasi-scientific way, but it’s a good teacher for those of you wannabe writers: it teaches us to write a very emotional topic in a controlled pace. Well, if you often hear reviewers judge certain books whose endings are written in a rush, this time you’ll find how a writer can end (and even tell the whole) his/her story very patiently and with a controlled pace (mind the repetition, okay? Its just I can’t help re-typing the three words).
