REVIEW: Giraldi's latest novel explores the power of celebrity and how a pretty face can open lots of doors, some of which may have been better off left shut.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the actress Gal Gadot released a video of herself and several celebrity friends singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in what she claimed was an attempt to bolster the public’s spirits amid the early lockdowns.
The characters in the book insist that Face is imbued with a preternatural charisma that touches people in their souls and opens them up to new, life-changing ways of thinking. But it seems like he just has a really, really pretty face and, because of that, people fall all over themselves to praise whatever it is he does because he’s nice to look at—the attractiveness bias at work.
Perhaps this is Giraldi’s point: That a fast-talking, good-looking charlatan can toss off a bunch of generalized, self-help-inspired platitudes — what Jovi calls “the glib paradoxes Kahlil Gibran trafficked in” — and make it appear to an easily dazzled public that an epiphany has taken place even though nothing has actually happened at all.
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