Fiction:The Secret of My Face is all about secrets, their revealing and unveiling, in a well-wrought narrative set in 1930s Ireland. The debut novel of actress Karen Ardiff, it tells the poignant story of Veronica Broderick, whose face has been marked since birth by a cleft lip and palate. The novel focuses on events surrounding a planned reconstructive surgery operation on the young girl.
The story opens in a small rural townland, Shannack, located near Dublin, where Veronica has lived for the 14 years of her life, keeping home for her brother and father as her mother is dead. Veronica's first complete sighting of her own face occurs in the opening pages, as she prepares herself for the visit of Dr John Geraghty, sent from Dublin to examine her by a wealthy aunt and uncle. With her father vigorously opposed to any form of reconstructive surgery, Veronica rebels and flees to Dublin, where she moves into her relatives' home and preparations for her operation begin.
The main characters' compulsive obsession with revealing what they see as the hidden face, the "real" face of Veronica's beauty is matched in the intense, confessional narrative style of the novel. Veronica's hopes and fears, as well as the changes in her character as the story proceeds, are all recounted to the reader in her own voice. But the ways in which changes in her life are being effected by others is signalled in the inclusion of the voices of Veronica's aunt Kitty and also Professor Coote, a blind retired surgeon who sees himself as the mastermind of the reconstructive operation. It is not just Veronica's story it seems - others are writing the script as well, and one of the novel's most successful features is its ability to skilfully portray an array of interlinking characters all of whom have something to say about Veronica's future fate.
The thematic crux of The Secret of My Face is a concern with bodies and the fixing or restructuring of them so as to conform to certain standards or norms. It is in this way that this novel, set in the past, speaks directly to a contemporary Irish present consumed with beauty and body control, where plastic surgery clinics offer package deals. In addition, the novel's focus on the veiling/unveiling of Veronica's face could even be placed in the context of a desire in the West to unveil "non-Western" women to confirm to its own norms - and all the problems associated with that.
The Secret of My Face is a brave and exciting novel in the field of Irish writing - haunting in its denouement. Its focus on embodiment points to a growing trend in contemporary Irish women's writing to examine the gendered body and how it works. And the body of this novel - the telling ? It works, it works very well.
Claire Bracken teaches on the Irish Studies programme at University College Dublin and is researching contemporary Irish women's writing and film
The Secret of My Face By Karen Ardiff New Island, 250pp. €12.95