Grisly yet inspiring.

Both heartbreaking and inspiring, The Facemaker tells a profound story of survival, resurrection and redemption.

A fascinating medical history.

In her engrossing book, Lindsey Fitzharris not only tells the story of Gillies’s achievements, she immerses us in the world of the men he helped.

Fitzharris, a historian of science and medicine, has written a riveting, old-fashioned, man-meets-the-moment account of Gillies' work in the field of plastic surgery.

The process of facemaking, Fitzharris captivatingly shows, required both surgical innovation and artistic skill.

With rich, glossy strokes The Facemaker restores a sense of immediacy to the daily struggles facing Gillies and his colleagues as they improvised under constant pressure.

Conveys the emotional, physical and psychical effects of having an injured and altered face, directly from those who had to deal with them.

... she has successfully pieced together the story of a team of doctors, hospital workers and patients 'battling' together during the First World War to modernize reconstructive plastic surgery. Through tangential but substantive anecdotes related to the plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, Fitzharris constructs a variegated and tender account of the First World War, its brutality and its narratives of human redemption.

Fitzharris is a gifted storyteller and delights in just about the right amount of detail.

As heartbreaking stories emerge daily from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s difficult to imagine anything uplifting coming from any war ever. But author Lindsey Fitzharris reveals hope in the carnage of a long-ago conflict in The Facemaker.

Commendable.

An engaging, at times moving biography of Harold Gillies.

A fascinating portrait.

[An] often graphic yet inspiring, engaging book.