Today On Our Minds welcomes acclaimed author Alyssa Sheinmel, to discuss her new YA book Faceless; a story about a girl named Maisie losing herself after a tragic accident, and the long hard fight to find her way back.
Thanks for joining us here, Alyssa! You have a really lovely, thoughtful way with words. You also know how to dive deep into your narrator’s mind, making Maisie an incredibly compelling character. Faceless was sparked by an article in The New Yorker about a man who had to have a full face transplant. What kind of research did you do to prepare to write this book? Can you share some of what you learned?
Wow, thank you so much! And, as you mentioned, it began with that excellent article from The New Yorker. I’m pretty sure I underlined more of the article than I left blank! My favorite line came from a plastic surgeon, who explained that while other surgeons made you well by taking you apart by cutting out the parts of you that are no longer functional, that are diseased, that have turned toxic plastic surgeons make you well by putting you back together. I’m also indebted to images of face transplants that I found online and in articles; they helped me understand what Maisie’s scars would look like.
I don’t think I fully appreciated just how specialized this branch of medicine was until I began to research it. Some of the doctors I spoke to had never even heard of face transplants a few thought I was making it up, or at least taking major artistic liberties. But I was very lucky to get to speak to a plastic surgeon that specialized in reconstruction and generously took the time to speak to me and answer my myriad questions. I wanted to make sure that Maisie’s injuries were realistic; for example, could she have been burned in such a way that she’d need to replace her cheeks, nose, and chin, but retain her jaw? This doctor explained that electrical fires burn strangely, so it was certainly possible. (He added that pretty much everything about these surgeries is unusual, so there were no hard and fast rules.) He also provided me with a detail that really stayed with me: it takes a while for the nerves to grow into transplanted skin, so for a period after her surgery, Maisie’s face would feel like sort of a mask hanging off of her it might actually feel heavy. Of course, that detail made its way into Faceless.
Maisie has to deal with a partial face transplant. Were you able to relate to a character going through something this extreme? How were you able to tell that story in a way that would be captivating for a teen audience?
I couldn’t help but think of Maisie’s experience as a sort of metaphor for the way that so many of us struggle with questions of identity. Fortunately, most of us will never find ourselves in situations as extreme as Maisie’s. But a lot of us still struggle to discover how much of who we are is tied to what we look like. How many of us look in the mirror and are occasionally disappointed, surprised, even shocked by the sight of our reflections? Sometimes it’s just a haircut a few inches too short or an outfit that looked different in the store than it does at home, but whatever the reason, sometimes we see our reflections and think: That’s not what I thought I looked like. While Maisie’s experience may be singular, being a girl who doesn’t look the way she thinks she should isn’t. And, for better or worse, it was something I could relate to. I spent so much of my own adolescence and young-adulthood wishing I had different hair, different skin; that I was skinnier, shorter, that my lips were fuller, my nose smaller. Sometimes, when I looked in the mirror, I was actually surprised to find that I hadn’t transformed myself through sheer force of will.
Readers only get to see the finished product, but we’d love to give them a sneak peek into how you got to the final version. Can you talk about a specific scene that you added after the first draft, and why you included it?
After I wrote the first draft, my editor suggested shifting the story a bit (and I can’t thank her enough for that suggestion!), so that Maisie doesn’t just contemplate going off her meds, but stops taking them entirely to be free from the drug’s side-effects. It was tricky to get this part of the story just right, Maisie needed to become desperate enough to do something reckless, but not so desperate that she wouldn’t consider going back. Structuring this section of the book felt a bit like moving around the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, making sure that one action moved smoothly into the next decision and so on. But I think it became such an important part of Maisie’s story. When Maisie decides whether or not to go back on her meds, she’s essentially making a choice between life and death.
Do your books normally have “happy endings”? Would you consider Faceless to have a happy ending?
As a reader, I love a good happy ending. I’m a big fan of fairy tales and I love a story that ends with the feeling of happily ever after (if not those exact words!). But as a writer, I don’t think I’ve ever written a purely happy endingmy endings tend to be a bit more ambiguous, because I think that life is pretty ambiguous. I love the way Faceless ends, but I have to admit, it’s probably more bittersweet than it is happy.
