ABOUT FACE [Paperback]

Cecile Rossant'sAbout Faceis an eclectic jumble of short fiction, ranging in length from three and a half lines to 23 pages, sucks you in under the pretence of being short stories and before you know it, lo-and-behold, you realise you're reading a poem. It may not always look like a poem, or even sound like one, but Rossant's writing is so beautiful, so lyrical that by the end of the collection there is no doubt: poetry it must be.

“... forget your pre-conceptions about narrative and just roll with the beauty of the language. A rewarding, at times delectable, dream-like experience which stays with you long after you think you've woken up.”
- Damien McGuinness

“Cecile Rossant s fiction follows the economical arc of dreams, of dream logic and imagery. Many of these stories are as brief as lyric poems. Others (notably The Belly of a Bird, a lovingly painstaking account of cooking and sensuality) offer the pleasures of accreted description and twisting plot. Humor and grief thread their way through the work in unexpected ways. But in all of Rossant's stories the reader can t help but admire the intensity, the physicality, the directness, the quirkiness of vision. There is nothing easily conventional here, and because there isn't, we must look and think and feel.”
-Mary Jo Salter

These stories are about as indecent and shocking as your dreams: Death, sex, violence and illicit yearnings ... Even more surprising is that all this is recounted in a tone often verging on the hilarious. I didn't know it was even possible to pour scorn on the sex industry and be witty at the same time. After reading "The Tuna Club" and "Appropriate Actions" I now see it is. In other stories, such as "She Twists to Position Her Face", Rossant demon-
strates such empathy for the fat and the unattractive that by the end you will never make fun of the audience of Jerry Spló