A wonderful dark tale, a bedtime story for adults!

The main character was a beautiful child. After a deadly fever and the intervention of a healer, he paid for his recovery with a face horribly disfigured. He would live, but in everyone’s eyes, he would be a monster.

Abandoned by his father, a man hated by all, he is then taken in, educated, and hidden by the village priest because, within Fond-du-Puits, a tiny, isolated hamlet, passions run violent and hatreds are ancient.

Despite his monstrous appearance, he becomes an intelligent, kind, and lively boy. He finds freedom in the forest, at night, and soon his calling as an embalmer. One evening, he meets for the first time a girl his own age, whose family lives on the outskirts of the village. His brother, too, must remain hidden: he bears the burden of an overwhelming beauty. A dangerous beauty that could stir unhealthy passions. A strong and dangerous relationship then develops between the girl and the main character.

In The Face of the Night, we return to the remote village of Fond-du-Puits, the setting of Cécile Coulon’s previous novel, The Language of Hidden Things. While the latter was dense in its plot and writing, The Face of the Night unfolds over fifteen years and presents a complex story with characters who are just as ambivalent. Angels and monsters merge, idiocy rubs shoulders with knowledge, love leads to murder, life is anchored in death. The reader is drawn into a poetic maelstrom with muted echoes. Within the confines of a damned village, all the passions clash, which Cécile Coulon’s lyrical language makes vibrate with intensity.