3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

I confess to choosing this book by the title. It just sounded interesting, I didn't realize it was a memoir until I read the blurb. A Face for Picasso is the memoir of Ariel (and by association her twin sister Zan) Henley - girls born in 1990 with the rare Crouzon's Disease which causes the bones in the head/face to fuse prematurely.

Ariel Henley writes with honesty, emotion, and frailty. It is moving and heart-wrenching. At the same time, it is inspirational and really fascinating to learn about the facts of her over 60 surgeries as well as what it felt like to grow up in her skin.

Sometimes I didn't love the writing-it felt a bit simple or too conversational, but I suppose that should be forgiven in a memoir!

Highly recommended.

3.5⭐️

I don’t feel like I could adequately give this one a started review since it’s particularly a fault of my own: I am absolutely terrified of surgery and many of the early chapters involved descriptions of procedures that were essential to our narrator’s survival. Clearly this author is much stronger than I.

The way Henley tells the story of growing up with a disfigured face by combining her story with what a garbage human Pablo Picasso was is brilliant. This one will stick with you for awhile.

A good first person account of living with Crouzon syndrome and the societal expectations of beauty.

This was a very interesting memoir that made me reevaluate my own relationship with beauty standards. It also made me remember a young man I met in college who had some physical differences, and I couldn’t figure out why he was so mean to everyone. I think I understand now: a lifetime worth of misunderstanding, medical issues, and the burden of not being able to blend in isn’t something that can be erased easily, even by people who mean well.

I was not expecting this to be as riveting as it was, but I read the entire thing in a single day. Even as someone whose main reading diet consists of YA, memoir is not an area I'm ever particularly excited about in that vertical, as I think a lot of authors have trouble figuring out what voice, approach, and focus is appropriate for the genre and they either come off as obnoxiously all-knowing or very remedial and patronizing. Henley is a fantastic writer, and I think she successfully focused the narrative through her teen mind while still being the sort of older sister adult guiding the reader through, and I really appreciated how she managed things she didn't understand at the time but does now--things that gen Z does already understand, because they are just more comfortable with calling out racism, sexism, prejudice, internalized stereotypes, and more, while Henley, though a few years younger than I am, is a millennial, and we were not given that freedom. That perspective, I think, is one of the reasons I felt so engaged--reassessing your memories with a new understanding but not punishing, hating, or holding your past self to a standard she couldn't possibly have reached is hard!

I think the Picasso thread is also amazingly well rendered. I think readers will (and she sets her readers up to) expect the reference to end after

Spoiler

the mention in the magazine, but she shows how much that single offhand comment really impacted her, not just in a "that hurt my feelings kind of way" but in a "that gave me a lifelong preoccupation and now I have some really high-level, astute things to say about it, so fuck you very much, shut up, and take some knowledge" way that I am very much here for. (By the way, fuck Picasso. You will hate Picasso by the end of this and that is 10000% okay; thank you for taking down an over-celebrated white dude, Ariel.)

Another cool thing? No photos. I think adult readers in particular might pick up a book like this and expect to be able to do some sadist trauma tourism or something, but they won't get the chance here. No sensationalism, no "look how bad it was/look how bad it wasn't!" The story is in the text.

A beautifully written and compelling story from a perspective not often heard or represented in media. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone - young adult and beyond.