Customer Reviews

The Face Thief: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Eli Gottlieb is not a prolific writer. THE FACE THIEF is his third novel in approximately 14 years. But what he lacks in quantity is more than equalized by the quality of his work. His latest is one of those remarkable books that sneaks up on the reader, startles, and remains memorable long after the final paragraph is read.

THE FACE THIEF is told primarily from the viewpoints of three different people. The main protagonist, if there is one, would be Margot Lassiter. We meet Margot just as she is experiencing a debilitating...accident? incident?...that places her in jeopardy from a couple of different directions as her past actions catch up with her. The narrative then moves backward in time and introduces two other characters living on different coasts of the United States.

One is Lawrence Billings, a successful New England motivational/instructional speaker on the downside of middle age whose shtick is interpreting facial expressions and body language for financial advantage. He meets a young woman at one of his seminars who retains him for private lessons and is slowly captivated by her. His attraction to her is balanced by the fact that he can "read" her, and the story is one that can only end in disaster for him. There is a neat twist here, of course --- actually a couple of them --- as Billings gets in trouble, but not for the reasons one might expect.

Some three months later, a newly-married education administrator named John Potash is awakened in his new northern California home by a telephone call inviting him to partake in a high-yield investment opportunity. The woman calling him promises a fast and rewarding return on his six-figure investment, cobbled together with contributions from his parents and his new wife. What he receives is, shall we say, something else. That result is more or less predictable, but it's only the beginning of what is revealed.

Margot, as might be expected, is the common point of the difficulties that Billings and Potash experience. The subtle question raised here is to what degree the two gentlemen contribute to their own problems. At least Odysseus had the foresight to have himself tied to his ship's mast when he sailed past the Sirens; Billings and Potash practically fall over themselves as they each cut loose. Gottlieb does a masterful job of showing rather than telling --- and he shows far more than what I have told you here --- as Billings, Potash and Margot fall back, regroup, and attempt to recover from the consequences of their individual actions.

The conclusion isn't completely surprising, but it's not exactly predictable either. Each of the parties succeeds somewhat in reaching their goal. It just isn't entirely pretty. And there is some blowback on secondary characters. Matters aren't resolved in such a neat manner, but this turn of events simply makes the book that much more believable. We all know people like them, to one degree or another, and Gottlieb brings them to life on the printed page.

While nominally exploring topics normally found in suspense and thriller novels, THE FACE THIEF concentrates more on a study of the human condition than a whodunit or whydunit ordinarily would. Though not entirely dark, it's an occasionally grim cautionary tale, a morality play using the ebb and flow of male-female relationships as the basis of a modern parable, whose primary lessons are: Hang on to your heart, and watch your wallet. And vice versa.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

The Face Thief pushes you down the stairs on the first page and never lets you get your feet under you. Extraordinary characters are at the heart of a very believable series of events. The story shifts back and forth between the three main characters points of view. Eli Gottlieb expertly guides you through the minds and emotions of the people who drive this crafty psychological thriller. Love, parenting, relationships, temptation, money, and even green living are explored in an honest voice that doesn't take sides. This is a must read for your reading group.

Reading Eli Gottlieb's "The Face Thief" is somewhat like a paltry Disney ride. It starts out slow and has a hard time garnering much enthusiasm. As the story progresses, the interest builds but is stuttered due to too many scene jumps. The pace picks up, however. Then at the end, the tale ends with a dull thump and the reader is left with some questions.

"Face Thief" is a villianess' tale. The protaganist is a soulless, narcissistic woman, a sociopath who sees the world and it's inhabitants as her playthings, to be chosen and toyed with then tossed aside after she's drained them of their psychic essence and their money. That, on it's own, is a great theme to explore but Gottlieb does so with too many distractions and they ruin the pacing and focus of his story. All chapters concerning the main character are written in italicized "flash-back" style which tends to be bothersome. The three other characters, her victims, are somewhat non-sympathetic and are a bit hard to care about. The result being that the most interesting person in the book is also the one you'll care the least for. Still, the book is a page-turner in places.

Without creating a spoiler, I have to at least relate that the end of Gottlieb's work was a let-down as I was hoping justice would be served. Instead I was served a somewhat room temperature finale.

All in all, not a bad effort but Gottlieb's novel could use some heavy editing and a re-write, IMO. Three stars are given for the main parts, two taken away for the distractions.

I had a hard time finding the "mesmerizing tale of psychological suspense" in this book. This has to be one of the most tedious thrillers of all time. The person who is injured is known from the beginning. She doesn't have any memory of the incident of falling, of having been pushed down a long flight of stairs, of who she was before she was sent on the solo flight, or even of the people she harmed. The doctors told her it was a near miracle that she survived. Memories come back to her slowly and she starts to remember things that seem irrelevant but she doesn't share them with her caregivers. Her memories are also not very interesting. This character is never in danger of anything except dying from boredom.

There are two suspects also known to the reader throughout, and I found myself cheering them on, in my only interest in the book, hoping that whoever did it would get away with it. It would have been a public service if he had pushed harder.

The only interesting character is the elderly mother and she doesn't appear as a character until halfway through the book and she is only present briefly enough to present a deus ex machina. She brings out the only sympathetic qualities of her son. Then she is out of the story for the most part.

It wasn't that I didn't like the story or the writing, as much as I didn't care about them. I didn't find any of them interesting, only self-absorbed and tedious. It was one of those rare books that I considered not finishing.

"The Face Thief" is part-noir, part-character study in a narrative that is compulsively readable yet interestingly detached at the same time.

Novel opens from the point of view of a woman who is falling or impacting on something that will knock her out. Then it moves to Lawrence, a face reader, at a seminar who brings up an intriguing woman to demonstrate how he reads faces. Then it goes to John Potash, a recently married man, who is approached by a saleswoman for some kind of investing.

Soon we find out that the thing in common of these first 3 chapters is that the woman is the same person.

Margot is a fabulous character. Noir in that she's the dame who is just no good but the men can't seem to avoid being fooled by her.

An investigation into her accident brings out how she has affected Lawrence, John and now the investigator, Dan.

Author Gottlieb lays out the story almost matter of factly. Everyone has a reason to want to push Margot down some stairs. She's a manipulative con-artist. And that's how it becomes a character. We learn why and how John is trying to mitigate how he was fleeced. Or why Lawrence was trying to get her out of life. Or why Dan seems to want to save her.

The detachment of the narrative could be boring if it wasn't so spare and to the point. And Gottlieb doesn't waste the reader's time by making this novel 500 pages. It clocks in at an easy, read-in-a-night less-than-250-pages.

If it went past 300 pages, I might have been tempted to click it down a star but at 250 pages, it is a solid 4 star story that reads with the surrealism of a short story but with the details of a novel.

I'm surprised by some of the negative reviews. I really enjoyed this book and I'm very picky. It wasn't a fast-paced read and was off-beat but I liked that.

The novel starts with a woman falling down the stairs. We don't know if she has been pushed but we quickly discover that there are two men who could have done it.

Josh Potash invested his savings, only to discover it was a scam, so he tries to find the woman and try and get his money back.

Lawrence Billings is a "face reader" who has written books and gives seminars. Margot asks for personal lessons and becomes a prize student.

A cop questions Margot as her memory slowly returns. He knows what she is but thinks he can change her.

The story moves between the three characters. None are really likeable but they are very human. You may not like the ending but I found it fitting with the rest of the story. I would recommend this to anyone who can enjoy a book off the beaten path.

The Face Thief is an intriguing but somewhat slow-paced mystery novel. For much of the beginning of the book, the author switches back and forth between several seemingly disparate plot threads. As the book progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent how all the parts are connected. A woman hospitalized after a brutal attack, a victim of a financial con, and a struggling public speaker don't initially seem to have much in common, but their interactions are at the heart of the story.

If you are looking for a mystery with exciting action sequences or a brilliant detective making intuitive leaps of logic to solve the case, look elsewhere. The Face Thief relies more on the emotional and mental states of the characters to move the story along.

I was looking forward to reading a book about deceit based on reading body language- I thought I was going to love this novel, but try as I might I just could not. It seemed to have a promising start, but the middle and end to this book really were lacking. The characters were not quite as thought out as they could have been, the plot line is interesting but needs some work, and the writing style is a little confusing.

I can't say it is all bad- the parts of the plotline that were interesting were quite riveting, and the beginning of the book held a lot of promise. So maybe it is just me- if you like mysteries in which you never get a solid and conclusive end then this might be the book for you.

I usually run into trouble when I read a book in which I find that I dislike all of the characters. "The Face Thief" is one of those books...and yet at the end of the day, I did like this book.

I suppose I liked the WAY in which author Eli Gottlieb makes each of the main characters unlikable. Their egos and wildly over-inflated senses of self worth make this a satire of sorts, mocking many aspects & professions of our modern society.

"He began, as he was supposed to, with the local, or he supposed, Local. This he did by dwelling on the outlying suburban grid of houses, artfully screened one from the other through small trompe l'oeil wilderness settings, where lean, smart people were returning home from work in their low-pollution cars and sustainable light rail conveyances. Many of them wore clothes made of recycled plastic bottles and employed personal skin and hair-care products derived from low-carbon footprint processes. They drank shade-grown coffee and ate foods rich in monophytomers and glyconutrients. Progressive on all the important questions, they drove life toward a kinder, cleaner, more humanly scaled future. These were his people. He belonged among them. Somehow or another, he'd aligned the energies of his life to arrive at their golden summit in the pecking order of destiny. Had any citizens in history ever been more deliciously replete in their existence?"

As heavenly as that kind of existence sounds to me...I get the idea and the humor in the self-satisfied, pat oneself on the back way.

This book is peopled with characters who take action in direct opposition to who they consider themselves to be...yet directly in-line with their true natures. There is a husband, whose living depends on teaching others to read faces and to gain inner knowledge of other people who is clueless about his own character and about the women he comes into contact with...and is even more clueless about his marriage.

"The forty-eight hours since his wife left had been a trial. During the first day in particular, out of force of long-standing habit, he'd tried to call her several times, but her phone, maddeningly, rang on through, and it was suddenly borne in on him just how powerless a person is to make someone else love them when that other person either (a) doesn't, or (b) is withholding that love for reasons of being white-hot pissed."

There is a cop...who for some reason thinks that the woman criminal he meets...she is different, she can be saved, she can be redeemed.

The husband who is so pleased with his life and his new marriage that he risks and loses everything he has in order to make his life even better. Who prides himself on being so very smart and so talented...that when he makes his nearly fatal error, ends up depending on his mother to save him.

"Did the soul ever grow older? That nine year old boy was still looking out of his eyes. Life was deeper, more punishing, more deliciously fraught than that child could ever have imagined, and filled with redemptions in the least likely of places. The towering wave of tears was about to fall, but there was still time for him to bury his face in the fragrant glen of his wife's neck, and mutter the words, "Thank you," out loud. Even better, in the quiet space of the chapel, in the moment before the rest of his life began, there was still time to mean them."

I just noticed that as I described these dislikable characters...the one I didn't describe was the true villain of the book. I didn't like her either...but she at least seemed to accept her nature. She was honest in her dishonesty. The others...just seemed to be honest when it either suited them...or when their actions reached a breaking point and there were honestly unhappy about being found out.

The Face Thief by Eli Gottlieb begins with a stunning sequence- one that made me wince and flinch with every excruciating sentence. A woman is falling down the stairs and we get a running narrative of her body's physical trauma. Her orbital orb cracking, rib fracturing - However, in between the descriptions of breaking bones, we get the woman's emotional reaction with memorable, lyrical passages in stark contrast to the painful ones.

"Pain had a voice. It spoke to her as she shot off the top step and forward into space, patiently explaining that this was not how her life was supposed to end."

Who is this woman? Who pushed her and why?

By the end of the book, we get the simple answers to these questions, but, like the characters, the truth is very complicated.

As the cryptic title might imply, the novel is about a thief of property, as well as emotions. Though we find out about the events leading up to the woman's fall, her childhood, and part of her adulthood, we never find out her true name. Instead we are given various names she uses and identities she assumes in different situations, in order to steal something from someone. Each time she wears a different face - innocent child, bright ingenue, trustworthy businesswoman, admirable victim - so convincingly that she is able to manipulate everyone around her.

The novel tells the alternating stories of two men this seductive con artist attempts to deceive: one is John, a newlywed of comfortable means who is set up as a relatively cautious, but ultimately easily duped victim of fraud.

In fascinating contrast, the other is Lawrence, a psychologist trained in the science of nonverbal psychological "tells." He's skilled in instantly discerning lies or concealment, no matter how artful that person is. Lawrence is so successful at what he does that he teaches seminars on how to analyze facial and other physical features for business purposes. If anyone can spot and unmask a con artist, it would be Lawrence.

The narrative from his perspective is the most intriguing part of the book. In fact, if such a seminar were offered in real life, I would take it. As I read, I wondered how much of myself I was revealing without saying a word, with every unguarded expression, facial tic, movement, posture, choice of clothes, etc. Our every visible aspect and other subtle clues give away our inner selves, even those desires and fears we're not aware of, let alone those we want to conceal. Anyone skilled in reading the signs would have great advantage, even power, over others.

"..[T]hings aren't necessarily what they appear at first...we deal with the liminal...with the partial, the hidden. To the experienced reader, faces and bodies are like a kabbalistic text in which every word stands for something other than what it seems."

The Face Thief is an impressive work of character study. Gottlieb explores the psychological terrain of his subjects in riveting detail. The novel is not so much about which of the con artist's would be victims pushed her, but what makes each of these characters tick and how their secret natures, despite their attempts at self-control, drive them towards their downfalls.

Where The Face Thief falters is what happens after the woman wakes up in a hospital and is confronted by the police. The plot, involving incredibly quick, superhuman recovery and police custody which is both supertight and incredibly lax, simply lost me at this point.