JEALOUS lovers make good drama and brutal enemies. But not as brutal as the surgeon's blade in The Secret of My Face. Set in 1930s Dublin, Karen Ardiff 's debut novel tells the story of a young girl's struggle to transform herself into a beautiful woman. Born with a hare lip and cleft palette, 14-year-old Veronica Broderick's life has been shaped by her facial disfigurement and the possibility of corrective surgery offers her a chance of happiness and a normal life. It is also a tragic love story which shows how good intentions don't always have happy endings.

An actress by training, Ardiff wrote The Secret of My Face over a period of about two years during a time when both her parents were extremely ill in hospital.

"Hospitals and doctors are a great unknown for most people and that can make us feel very vulnerable. Because we don't feel it's our place, we don't question what's happening and that fed right into the book. That sense that, in some ways, this child is given over to strangers in the name of medicine.

Yet when you meet Dr Coote and Dr Geraghty, they're very human and you think, 'why is this child being entrusted to these people, one of whom can scarcely remember her name?' I think that is a feeling many people have encountered in dealing with hospitals."

Although the novel is set in the 1930s, there are several themes running through it, such as the modernisation or rapid change of Ireland, as well as the pressure to be beautiful that has become such an obsession, that make interesting reading for readers today.

"I set it in 1929/30 for two reasons. Firstly, because there wasn't much going on politically, and also because, during my research, I found that there was something beautiful about this period.

"It made a lot of sense to me that people would think that they could perform the kind of surgery that could transform a person.

Also, at the heart of the novel which I think is quite sad is that Veronica is always led to believe that she's going to be made beautiful, but nobody who's in the know surgery-wise will be under doubt that she will look, as her father said, 'sewn-up'."

While Veronica's corrective surgery was more of a necessity than most cosmetic surgery, her desire to be beautiful and the lengths she is prepared to go to achieve that end isn't a million miles from those of her age group today. Despite working in an industry that focuses on appearance, however, Ardiff hasn't been unduly affected by the pressure to be beautiful.

"Because most of my career has been on stage, it's less rigorous about appearance. I think stage allows you to portray yourself in many different ways. Stage is illusion, it's accepted that you are who you are. But I don't think anyone could fail to be affected by the insane emphasis on having a particular look.

"I don't think that was always the case. If you look at old TV or film clips of bands and singers from even 20 years ago, you know that many of them would not have been given record contracts now because there is a horrific uniformity about how we're supposed to look."

Ardiff is best known for her career on stage, television and film. She graduated from the Samuel Beckett Centre, TCD, has appeared in many stage plays, winning the ESB/Irish Times Best Actress Award for her performance in Love in the Title, and has toured extensively with the Abbey and Peacock. She has also appeared in numerous TV dramas such as Glenroe and Ballykissangel, as well getting film parts in Evelyn and This Is My Father.

Novice writers are often advised to stick to what they know, and for Ardiff, acting provided a major inspiration for the form of her novel, which reads like a diary of all the characters' thoughts, so much so that one could easily imagine this story on the stage.

The idea for the novel grew out of a story Karen's father told her about a young relative who needed a similar operation. The money wasn't available, so her grandfather put up the cash, but the child died on the operating table.

"This story was drawn from the central incident of having the best intentions but not understanding the ecosystem you're interfering with. I've always wanted to write, and that was the first time I'd heard a story I thought needed to be written as a novel. I felt it was dealing with complex emotions that would require time to tease out. That's what attracts me to the novel, the idea of carrying one's empathy for a character through a long form."

For the reader, however, it's difficult to find a character to empathise with in this novel. Fourteen-year-old Veronica has lived a semi-feral existence taking care of her alcoholic father and hardworking brother since the death of her mother. When her wealthy uncle and aunt offer to pay for her surgery out of the blue, you wonder why their act of concern is for her appearance rather than her day-to-day welfare. Veronica's attachment to Dr Geraghty, the spurned love interest of the piece, is only briefly described and so difficult to believe.

But heavily influenced by Ardiff 's childhood love of Agatha Christie, The Secret of My Face is more of a romance with a twist and one that will certainly take most readers by surprise.