Under the Skin: A Novel (original 2000; edition 2001)

I started this book one Saturday, and then laid around all day finishing it. I felt justified in doing that, too.

Tonally, it's literary. The plot is pretty suspenseful, but i don't mind being in the dark for the majority of a novel if the writing carries it well. Faber is just as good at landscape and dialogue as he is at slowly uncovering a narrative. He's also admirably gruesome.

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This is one of those books ‘once read, never forgotten’, true to its title it really does get under the skin.

Under the Skin hooks you in from the first sentence: “Isserley always drove straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her.”

This book is a nightmare to review as its impact lies in the slow realisation of who Isserley is and what she is doing. As Paul Bryant says ‘you only find out bit by bit and it gets weirder until you just can't stand it’
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and when you do, ‘get it,’ your world falls away…

Faber takes you on an utterly compelling and thought-provoking journey from start to finish touching on humanity, empathy, consumerism and shallowness of society.

Startlingly original, elegant and concisely written and with a most compelling protagonist who makes you re-evaluate what it means to be human. ( )

Under The Skin by Michel Faber is the weirdest book I've read in quite a while; and that's certainly saying something.

In this science fiction come horror novel, the main character Isserley trawls the road looking for male hitchhikers to pick up, although early on in the novel her purpose is unclear. What is clear is that her appearance is different, she has scars criss-crossing her body and she refers to the men she is hunting as vodsels.

Hailed as "An Animal Farm for the next century" and with reviews claiming it "Teases and prods the reader up a plethora of literary blind alleys before hauling them screaming towards its final, thrilling destination" I was really looking forward to something special from Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White.

Did I get it? Well sadly, no. I spent the entire book waiting for the big reveal. The explanation or the backstory explaining the difference between humans and vodsels and Isserley's own history. I was rewarded with snippets, but it was never explained to my satisfaction.

I just had a look at the offerings on Wikipedia regarding Under The Skin, and the contents regarding the plot were a complete surprise to me; how could I have missed that? I have no idea, either it wasn't spelled out well or I'm a fool. Either way, this supposedly literary dynamite offering from Michel Faber was a let down for me.

Surprisingly it's being made into a film starring Scarlett Johansson, so of course I'll have to watch it just to see what they do with it. It might even shed some light on the book for me. ( )

Spoilers

I’m not sure if Faber meant this to be a moral tale or not. The discussion between Isserley and Amlis Vess over whether it’s cruel to eat humans could be taken to represent our debate about whether we should eat other animals or not. As a vegetarian myself, though, I didn’t find it particularly convincing and Faber left it inconclusive. While Vess is dealt with at a distance from Isserley’s point of view and therefore has his ideas of the wrongness of eating humans diminished and Isserley’s pro-eating humans are perhaps given a boost, the nature of the people Isserley kidnaps isn’t on the whole too pro-human. Certainly, though, there is quite a variety but the negative ones tend to have more impact – and so we feel less upset about the way they’re processed into food for these four-legged aliens.

The book initially relies on the reader trying to work out just what Isserley is up to, and Faber adeptly reveals the full story only gradually to maintain our interest. In the end I didn’t find a lot to hold on to apart from the immediacy of the plot. I think the reader is meant to feel some sympathy for Isserley with the lack of choice she had in her life and perhaps to diminish in our minds our criticism of her indifference to destroying humans as it’s meant to parallel human consumption of animals that we consider inferior. The way she didn’t develop as a character, though, reduced my interest in her. Still, I think Faber showed his promise here with the way he gave cameo third person limited accounts from the hitchhikers’ points of view, enriching the story and his prose was rich and unforced. ( )

The story takes place in rural Scotland. The main character, a peculiar young woman who drives around the highlands in search of hitchhikers, is complex and troubled. It is a short novel, in which the author develops an interesting idea, which is quite thought provoking. However, once the surprise is over, the plot becomes less interesting, and the story feels a bit too long. Although it is good read, it would have been better as a short story. ( )