A Face Without A Heart

Rating:
Summary: A vibrant, impressive work.
Review: Rick Reed has taken the basic plot of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and made it his own

The story follows Gary Adrion, an independently wealthy young man who is willingly pressed into posing for Liam Howard, an artist specializing in state-of-the-art holograms. The result is a three dimensional work of art that reflects both the beauty of the model, and the passion of the artist for his subject.

Awed by the hologram, Adrion rashly offers his soul in exchange for the ability to retain his physical beauty. Without realizing it (at first), his wish is granted: but he quickly discovers how high a price he has paid in the bargain. Devoid of his soul, Adrion finds himself robbed of the ability to experience either the pleasures or the ramifications of his actions. As a result, he embarks on an odyssey of sex, drugs and violence in a desperate attempt to feel something, remaining unscarred and unmoved while the hologram takes on the physical ugliness of his actions and the deterioration of his aging. The divorce of the man from the soul leads to a final act of violence and ultimate redemption.

Reed has transformed Wilde's prosaic story into a disturbing, searing indictment of our times, where moral ambivalence values beauty above substance. By choosing to present the story alternately through the eyes of several of the main characters (a device reminiscent of Bram Stoker's "Dracula"), Reed cleverly delivers the immediacy of a first person narrative, while allowing the reader insight in the characters' thoughts, feelings, and motivations: a privilege usually confined to a third person narrative. In other words, Reed has successfully managed to give the reader the best of both worlds.

His prose is alive with startling wordplay and haunting imagery. The description of Adrion's first encounter with his image (and the recognition of his own physical beauty) is so compelling (and oddly touching) that it makes his impulse to sell his soul chillingly believable. His subsequent descent into debauchery is handled in a way that is both intense and graphic, and yet shows an admirable restraint that demonstrates a reverence for the source.

A Face Without a Heart is a rarity in contemporary literature: a book of ideas that dares to explore the meaning and importance of preserving the soul.

A vibrant, impressive work.

Rating:
Summary: A Face Without a Heart
Review: Rick Reed's fourth effort, a modern-day retelling of Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray," is a compelling and horrific examination of depravity and behavioral excess. Cinematic in scope, Reed's tragic "A Face Without a Heart" is both spellbinding and provocative as it explores the degradation of the human soul. This is a magnetic and intelligent work grounded in precise prose.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: Rick Reed's retelling of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a chilling psychological adventure writeen with haunting and lovely prose. His writing captivates the reader with its engrossing, well-developed plot and absorbing characters, and satisfies with is disturbing tragic conclusion. Laced with caustic wit and cunning observations of the underside of modern urban life, Reed certainly illustrates how powerful a negative influence can be on an innocent person. As he explores issues pertaining to hedonism, conceit, conduct and eternal youth, he provides thoughtful and emotional insights to the human condition. This is a compelling novel with a solid story.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: Rick Reed's retelling of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a chilling psychological adventure writeen with haunting and lovely prose. His writing captivates the reader with its engrossing, well-developed plot and absorbing characters, and satisfies with is disturbing tragic conclusion. Laced with caustic wit and cunning observations of the underside of modern urban life, Reed certainly illustrates how powerful a negative influence can be on an innocent person. As he explores issues pertaining to hedonism, conceit, conduct and eternal youth, he provides thoughtful and emotional insights to the human condition. This is a compelling novel with a solid story.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: Rick Reed's retelling of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a chilling psychological adventure writeen with haunting and lovely prose. His writing captivates the reader with its engrossing, well-developed plot and absorbing characters, and satisfies with is disturbing tragic conclusion. Laced with caustic wit and cunning observations of the underside of modern urban life, Reed certainly illustrates how powerful a negative influence can be on an innocent person. As he explores issues pertaining to hedonism, conceit, conduct and eternal youth, he provides thoughtful and emotional insights to the human condition. This is a compelling novel with a solid story.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Touching Literary Excellence of the Original
Review: When I was a student in the 11th grade a long time back (I'm a final year medical student now, so you do the math), it was part of our curriculum to read the noevl, "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde. Now, though the story was nice at the time, what it really served to do was introduce me to one of the most important authors at the time. Wilde did not live in his time. His glamor and life was so diverse and flamboyant that he was exiled to France during his final days. Thus, it does not come to a surprise to me that his work would be retold with a much modern fervor to it. It works better in this era and time of materialistic, self-conceitedness.

I have never read the original book, though I have seen it in our school's library a number of times. That cover of a young man looking at his old misshappen portrait. A Face Without a Heart comes so close to the basic plot of the original that even the main character's name "Gary Adrion" is an anagram of the original's "Dorian Gray".

So what does not give in this retelling?

The pace is extremely slow and quite encompassing. There are times that you might want to get a chapter over with so quickly that you feel like you want to skim the page and be on with it. Reed knew this and tried to tell the story from a different character's perspective each chapter. That went well in the beginning, but in the end, you simply feel that the style of writing and flow of thought is the similar. I admit having been confused as to who was it telling the story now. Another thing worth commenting is the sex and drugs usage here. A number of readers have mentioned that it was too much. On the contrary, I think it was used too little. It does not rightfully reflect Reed's prowess when it comes to both of this. You can feel that he was restrained to cut loose when you compare this with his earlier work.

All in all, Reed succeeds in bringing out the main theme of the original classic by Wilde. What he fails to do was to actually shick the readers as Wilde did in his days. That, of course, is by no fault of his own. Rick Reed has great potential and a strong shock factor in him just like his peer, Ray Garton. Here's hoping that these authors become more mainstream with their own work in the future. There's never enough good writers in this age of commercialism, in a world that has become truly just a face without a heart.