Faces

I'm only half way through and I find this book very boring. It's a shame as it's a very good story line with explicit violence, but Martina repeats the same thing from one page to another.

We already know this about a certain character... It's like she's forgotten she's already told us.

I'm going to stick with it, even though I've started skipping pages.

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Well, I finished the book and was very disappointed. Faces has some great characters in it and could have been a good book if it was written well.

We authors are taught to show and not tell. Martina TELLS.

If Faces can become a best-seller, there's hope for us little people.

Cole has written this book before, and will doubtless write it again. This is the one about the rise of two Kray-style villains. She wrote it rather better in ‘The Take” and rather less well in ‘Goodnight Lady’. As with most of her books, this is both shockingly badly written and oddly compulsive. If ever a writer needed a good but ruthless editor, it is surely Martina Cole. The surprisingly articulate soliloquies of her characters, and sometimes of the author just go on for ever. At a key stage in the story, when the reader is desperate to know how things are going to work out, there is a long disquisition by the main character on his personal theology.

Floating in the background is a thesis about the origin of that show more character’s psychotic personality in a hatred of women rooted in Oedipal anger. I thought for a long time that she was going to say something meaningful about this, but the thought remained stubbornly un-focused.

There is a very long and rather peculiar spiel by the author on why one of the female characters should have retained her virginity. Maybe Martina Cole should next tackle a Regency romance. And is it not a pity that Barbara Cartland never produced an East End crime novel. show less

To be honest I only read 119 pages of this book. I wanted to give it a chance but from the beginning chapter you know that the main character's wife and best friend are plotting to kill him due to his despicable behavior. It then flashes back to his youth and at first you feel sorry for this kid but that quickly changes when he rapes a young girl and then in anger kills her. I put the book down and then after a day said maybe there is some redemption but when I started again he was gouging out a man's eyes. There was too much gory detail and I couldn't read another 400 pages of the same.

Very violent and repetative

bit repeatitve, but ok

bit repeatitve, but ok

not one of her best