Best description of a face I've read in a long time:

"You'd think it was a leather purse with teeth."

Written by Jim Crace in the Gift of Stone.

(If you haven't read Crace, he's brilliant. Dark and beautiful and brilliant. He wrote a new and different and sin-laden account of Jesus' 40 days in the desert, written from the point of view from some merchants living in the area, called Quarantine. Jesus is a bit character in the background and it's more a dark foray into morality and business, ie: the merchants. Then he also wrote a brilliant very literary forensic biology mystery-tragedy called Being Dead. His books are very, very hard to nutshell, but they're all reasonably short, easy, but sophisticated reads. Do yourself a favour. One of the great modern British writers that needs more readership over here. When it comes to descriptive prose, too, he numbers among the best.)

But, c'mon... a leather purse with teeth? I actually laughed out loud at the image I conjured. Great stuff. I gotta take a look at his bio and see if he's got much else available these days. Been a few years.

Oh! His newest is getting compared to Cormac McCarthy. Huh. There ya go. I find McCarthy a bit more abstract, but yeah, same vein I guess. A critic from the TLS says "Crace builds his effects from the bottom up with careful details." Yep. I concur.