Overview

A young girl grows up an outsider, then becomes drawn into the life of a local family with some curious beliefs. They treat her as a daughter and take her away with them to a religious holiday camp. It is here that she is introduced to the Finnish Envallist branch of Protestantism and here that events start to take a terrible turn. Rejected by some of the sectarians for her non-commitment to their beliefs, Natalie creates a rift in the group which culminates in a climactic scene where she is gravely injured. Later, as an adult in Finland, she tries to make sense of what happened and to unlock the secret origins of Envallism itself.

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Reviews

London novelist Page's first US appearance recounts the trauma of an emotionally and physically disfigured woman who makes sense of her tragic past. Like many academics, Natalie Baron has a quiet and rather lonely childhood. The only offspring of a single mother, she spends much of her growing-up time roaming the streets while her mother entertained gentlemen callers at home. On one of these rambles, the 13-year-old meets Barbara and John Hern, a devout Protestant couple who lived nearby with their 14-year-old son Mark. Members of a tiny Lutheran sect founded by a 19th-century Finnish pastor named Tuomas Envall, the Herns (like all Envallists) take the commandment against graven images so literally that they won't look at pictures or drawings of any kind. Brought up without television, storybooks, paintings, or even maps, Mark Hern develops into an intensely serious boy, and Natalie finds herself strangely drawn to him. Comforted by the atmosphere of order and discipline in the Hern house, she begins visiting them every day. Mark, sensing that Natalie will never be a true believer, treats her coolly, but Barbara (whose own daughter had died in infancy) becomes fond of the girl and eventually asks her to accompany the family on a holiday. We know (in flashbacks made from 30 years later on) that Natalie was horribly injured during that trip and that she eventually became a professor of religion and an expert on the life of Tuomas Envall. But we don't learn the cause of Natalie's injury, or the final discoveries of her research, until story's end. Although the true tale of Envall's life isn't as dramatic as the tragedy that nearly killed Natalie, it's explosive in its own way and explains a good deal-as does Natalie's obsessive interest in learning the reality behind the myths. Quietly powerful, with considerable emotional depth: an intriguing account of tortured faith and thwarted desire. (Kirkus Reviews)

Don't start this book until you have found a comfortable, peaceful place to read it, undisturbed, from cover to cover, for this is a mystery but one which disdains most of the tired conventions of its genre. The strange title is entirely apt, the face in question belonging to the narrator, Natalie, an academic researcher who has taken time out to live in Finland where she intends to write about an obscure sect formed in the previous century by Tuomas Envall. What was his religion all about? What motivated Envall to set out on the path that many others were to follow? Her passionate curiosity begins to make sense as she looks back on the events which first introduced her to the followers of Envall and drew her to one family and one woman in particular. From different backgrounds and with apparently different priorities, the woman and the girl, Natalie, find in one another something that they need. From the moment that they meet, their lives become more and more entwined. The narrative shifts from the present to the past are competent and assured as is the occasional change of viewpoint. Natalie's character is a triumph; many authors attempt to explain an adult destiny by exploring childhood experience but Kathy Page goes further creating one of the best portraits of an unhappy adolescent one is likely to find. The style is both sober and lyrical where necessary and the plot has a tension which is almost palpable. It's rare to find a book which can not only move and thrill but which asks fundamental questions about religious belief and the nature of virtue and sin. A tale hard to get out of one's mind. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Kathy Page was born in London. She spent some months in Finland researching the background to The Story of My Face.

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