My Face for the World to See

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A brilliant, bruising depiction of the dark side of 1950s Hollywood, from the author of In Love. 
 
At a Hollywood party, a screenwriter rescues an aspiring actress from a drunken suicide attempt. He is married, disillusioned; she is young, seemingly wise to the world and its slights. They slide into a casual relationship together, but as they become ever more entangled, he realises that his actions may have more serious consequences than he could ever have suspected. Hayes' exquisite novella, written in his cool, inimitable style, holds a revealing light to the hollowness of the Hollywood dream and exposes the untruths we tell ourselves, even when we think we have left illusions behind. 
 
'A masterpiece ... an insider's manual for all those who would aspire to fame, the ghostly glamour of the movies' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 
 
'Hayes is the poet of the things we think about while lying in bed, when sleep refuses to carry us off' David Thomson

A masterpiece ... An insider's manual for all those who would aspire to fame, the ghostly glamour of the movies

More than fifty years later, Hayes strikes me as more interesting and honest than so many of those famous novelists of the era ... It is time we recognized him as the author of two novels no reader will easily forget

An exciting, engrossing work, written with beautiful economy and the sure skill of an artist who knows what he is doing ... Hayes has created characters that are the essence of human hopes and frailty

Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences

Like a delayed Fitzgerald (think The Last Tycoon) or an encounter with Pavese in an unexpected quarter, elegant in its hopelessness, or hopeless in its elegance: a real find

The most vivid picture of Hollywood since Nathanael West's Day of the Locust

His most achieved portrait of male self-deception ... A sharp, forensic examination of power and money ... Hayes charts the couple's disintegration with luminous precision and lends it an air of dream-like inevitability ... His novels perfectly capture the texture of midcentury American life

Hayes has recently become something of a passion for those who find in his writing the mastery that makes a work of literature take up a permanent place in a reader's inner life

Alfred Hayes (1911-1985) was born in London and grew up in New York, where he later worked as a newspaperman. After joining the army in 1943 he served with the US forces in Italy. While in Rome he met Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini on the film Paisà, and began his career in script-writing. He moved to Hollywood to work in the movies and was twice nominated for an Oscar for his scripts. Hayes' seven novels include The Girl on the Via Flaminia (1949), In Love (1953), My Face for the World to See (1958) and The End of Me (1968).

Alfred Hayes

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world

A sensitive and gorgeously wrought study of connections and misconnections, this masterpiece of the period perfectly captures a short, but unique, period in history

Hayes balances a bitter depiction of an unforgiving world with sympathy for the sad evasive manoeuvres of the human psyche... His novels perfectly capture the texture of midcentury American life ... His work must come back to us in all its brutal honesty

Rome, December 1944. The city has been liberated by the Allies, but no one feels like celebrating. A bitter wind blows down Via Flaminia, where Signora Adela Pulcini keeps her boarding house and discreetly finds Italian girls for lonely America soldiers. Robert is one such soldier; Lisa is the girl procured to keep him company in return for food and shelter. But the simple exchange doesn't go to plan, as Robert and Lisa find themselves tangled in a dark, mutually destructive affair. Exposing the fault-lines between men and women, the old and new worlds, and victor and vanquished, Hayes's spare, taut novel is an incisive portrayal of sexual economics and the dark side of love.

Alfred Hayes

Praise for The Girl on the Via Flaminia

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world

Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world

Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences

A superb short novel ... The Hemingway influence is clear, but Hayes is his own man, a master of irony and ambiguity ... An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order

It is a bigger story than it seems to be, for it has implications that spread through the city and the world

Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences

Books by Alfred Hayes

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