This is a set of inter-related short stories, rather than a novel. Frequently an incident in one story is related by another person, from an alternate perspective, in another story. They are all related in the first person and, at times, it took a while to work out who the speaker was, male or female, young or old, and older or younger self compared to another of the stories. It was trancelike in its effect, leaving you always peering at the truth through a distorting mirror - what is real and what is not? At times the tellers themselves are not clear in their own mind. The depiction of the roadside looney and his waiting for an event that can never occur is one example of the mental uncertainty that exists here.
The last story in the book was the most isolated, but the most personal, in that it related directly to the act of reading and interacting with other readers of the same books. That was worth waiting for. ( )

Downbeat with Some Dark Humour
Review of the pre-release paperback (2019) (136pp) translation of selections from the French language original "Un renard à mains nues" (2012) (A Fox With Bare Hands) (340pp)

As explained by the excellent translators Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis in their afterword to Faces..., this collection of stories has been chosen based on character and incident connections i.e. where each story references people from another one. This tightens the bonds of the book turning it into a novel-in-short-stories. It also helps it adhere to the readable-in-one-sitting house style of Peirene Press.

It does seem though that the resulting selection has made this more of a depressing and downbeat affair with a few too many stories revolving around hitchhikers lurking or planning suicides on hidden highway approaches and/or the strangling of foxes with bare hands (to put a mortally injured animal out of its misery). I certainly did not feel like reading this in one sitting as it just became too depressing after a while. Spreading it over several days may cause one to miss some of the internal cross-references though. You can see from a comparison to the French original (340pp) that almost 2/3rds of the stories have been dropped in the translation (136*pp). I wonder if any of those had a bit more joy and happiness to them?

I mostly enjoyed "The Automatic Tour-Guide" with its permanent gîte**-resident spinner of local tourist trivia tales (partially invented by themselves) and "The Dropout" with its wedding crasher.

Faces... is part of Peirene Press's subscription series where direct purchases from the publisher are shipped 1-2 months in advance of the official publication date and availability through other retailers. Faces... will be officially published October 22, 2019.

* 136pp is the official page count from the publisher, but I have the book in hand and it is only 128pp even if you count the 4 unnumbered pages at the back end.
** small furnished tourist cabins or houses in rural France. ( )