RE: (TFT) Rant: part VI

["David Michael Grouchy II" <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

> From: "Cas and LISA Liber (& family)" <casliber@ozemail.com.au>
>
> DMGII (and other evilponderers)-

Cas,
  Nice pun!

> all this stuff on evil resonates nicely with
> a cool book I just read - Under the Skin, by Michel Faber.


I was curious so I looked up this review of the book real quick.  I noticed 
the reviewer wrapped up by using the terms "so distinctive," and "so 
original."


David Michael Grouchy II


Amazon.com
In the opening pages of Under the Skin, a lone female is scouting the 
Scottish Highlands in search of well-proportioned men: "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." At this point, the reader might be 
forgiven for anticipating some run-of-the-mill psychosexual drama. But 
commonplace expectation is no help when it comes to Michel Faber's strange 
and unsettling first novel; small details, then major clues, suggest that 
something deeply bizarre is afoot. What are the reasons for Isserley's 
extensive surgical scarring, her thick glasses, her excruciating backache? 
Who are the solitary few who work on the farm where her cottage is located? 
And why are they all nervous about the arrival of someone called Amlis Vess?

The ensuing narrative is of such cumulative, compelling strangeness that it 
almost defies description. The one thing that can be said with certainty is 
that Under the Skin is unlike anything else you have ever read. Faber's 
control of his medium is nearly flawless. Applying the rules of 
psychological realism to a fictional world that is both terrifying and 
unearthly, he nonetheless compels the reader's absolute identification with 
Isserley. Not even the author's fine short-story collection, Some Rain Must 
Fall, prepared us for such mastery. Under the Skin is ultimately a 
reviewer's nightmare and a reader's dream: a book so distinctive, so 
elegantly written, and so original that one can only urge everybody in 
earshot to experience it, and soon. --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an 
out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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