Michel Faber

Under the Skin

David Mitchell

Stephen Campbell

Under the Skin traces an extraterrestrial, Isserley, who has been surgically altered to resemble a human being, she drives the Scottish Highlands looking for muscular men to farm for their meat, an expensive delicacy on her world. “Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she hears passengers reveal who might miss them if they should disappear…”

Optimist: One thing I didn’t expect coming from the film to the novel is that the “humans” (as the aliens call themselves, while homosapiens are referred to as “vodsels”) aren’t so advanced as to be able to easily disguise themselves as homosapiens. Isserley has been left angry and bitter at how her body has been contorted and mutilated to make her look like us (and only passably at that), and she suffers from severe chronic pains. Her rage encompasses the surgeons for mutilating her, the elite class of her species for betraying her, and males (of both species) for objectifying and pitying her.

Cynic: Isserley is a great character but I’m not a fan of omnipotent narration, especially when it’s used so sporadically. It almost feels like cheating when we’re explicitly told what the hitchhikers are thinking.

Optimist: We don’t always know what they’re thinking. It’s used sparingly, rather than sporadically, and in a specific context. And besides, it’s these sections which give us some of the funniest and most interesting parts of the book. Like how every single one of the men she picks up doesn’t realise she looks a little odd for a human because every one of them – even the non-chauvinists – are distracted by her huge breasts. It’s funny until you realise how believable it is. It’s part of what makes it, in my view, a great feminist book.

Cynic: I didn’t know whether I felt that more sympathy for the vodsels or for Isserley. That’s kind of fucked up. I mean, look at me calling humans “vodsels”.

Optimist: That kind of divided loyalty is one of the book’s great strengths. Though Isserley shows herself to be capable of unimaginable cruelty against our kind, she is still essentially an exploited worker. She thinks about us in the same way we think about our sources of food, though at times has the same misgivings that I, as a meat-eater, have about the morality of what I’m doing.

Cynic: Don’t remind me. It’s when a few of them escape that we first get the sense of what’s going on. One of them tries to throw a clump of dirt at Isserley, but is so bulky from overfeeding that it isn’t able to. That in itself was a pretty horrific image, but then we find out about the cutting out of tongues and the castration…it’s horrifying. I can’t get some of those images out of my mind.

Optimist: I found that more funny than horrifying, though the book goes for a sense of both. It’s very satirical and over-the-top and yet, oddly, still “realistic”, in a sense. My favourite parts of the book were those with Amlis Vess. The dynamic between him and Isserley is fascinating; he is wealthy, idle and immensely privileged. Isserley is, as I mentioned, an exploited worker. She has suffered because of people like him, and our sympathies lie thoroughly with her. And yet it is Isserley who is preying on us “humans”, while Amlis Vess is – for want of a better term – an animal rights activist, vehemently opposed to the slaughter of living, thinking creatures for meat. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Vess’s idealism doesn’t automatically make him a hero. It could even be seen as self-indulgent – the concerns of the rich and privileged. Isserley doesn’t have the luxury to sit around philosophising on the morality of meat eating. She has a job to do.

Cynic: It’s interesting, this whole thing about empathy and power, but not exactly the most original of conflicts.

Optimist: My description doesn’t do it justice. It’s not one of those sci-fi novels in which characters are just vessels for the writer’s big themes Under the Skin is first and foremost character-driven. We genuinely care about Isserley, and that makes the big ideas of the novel much more interesting as they pertain to her character. All round, this book is just something else.

Cynic: On balance, I’d say I agree.

A brilliantly told and beautifully written novel that defies categorization, Under the Skin introduces Isserley, a woman obsessed with picking up male hitchhikers— so long as they're well-muscled and alone. But why? As the story unfolds and the reason is made explicit, the reader is drawn inexorably into a completely unexpected and increasingly terrifying world.

Under The Skin

Amy Thibodeau

Super weird, disturbing and stunningly written. Faber writes some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read.

Amani Zaha

Isserley looks out for big muscle when she's on the road. Beefy hunks, male. She's not interested in hitch-hikers who are scrawny, female or tied down, but apart from that she'll happily give anyone a ride. The men are always a little baffled by the sight of her — small frame and short legs, impossibly thick glasses and unkempt hair, scarred hands and an unnaturally large chest. She is at once alluring and off-putting, but Isserley's nice enough to stop her car for them, and the men never decline.


  MERCY. It was a word she’d rarely encountered.

Under the Skin is fascinating and disturbing. It is also difficult to discuss in a review, given how most of it revolves around a reveal that happens around midway. The story expertly handles a highly relevant current topic (which I will not mention here), but in a sort of removed, indifferent manner; rather than being in any way preachy or too on-the-nose, Faber merely crafts an unmistakable analogy and allows things to unfold. The parallels between the story and our reality are obvious, but they were drawn in a way that made it so easy for me to step out of myself and into the story's proposed perspective.

I would advice anyone interested in this novel to be cautious when reading anything about it beforehand. Some reviews openly describe the book's main themes, thereby revealing information that could ruin the mystery; some editions of the book include spoilers in the blurb. Go into it blind, for the best experience. :)

There are real-life issues discussed directly through hitchhikers the main character picks up, and then through fictional concepts resembling our own. Most of the characters are troubled and seen through the eyes of no mercy which is the intention. That's how we see livestock. 

There are reviews stating that the overall concept makes less sense when you think about it, real-life meat farming also makes less sense when you think about it tho. Considering they only started to farm, I expect them to make many mistakes. Other reviews are being put off by sexual objectification, but that's the point, farmers objectify the livestock, in this case, themselves.

There's a ton struggling to wrap their head around what's happening, it might be harder to grasp not knowing about the meat industry in the first place, it's as disgusting as in the novel.

The messy development the main character goes through is fun to witness. There's a ton of appreciation for nature.  

The ending doesn't wrap it up in a satisfying way, it felt like it could have gone on for a bit more. This universe could be expanded and explored more. Overall it's a well-crafted, enjoyable read tho.

Nota

This book is a fun ride. 

There are real-life issues discussed directly through hitchhikers the main character picks up, and then through fictional concepts resembling our own. Most of the characters are troubled and seen through the eyes of no mercy which is the intention. That's how we see livestock. 

There are reviews stating that the overall concept makes less sense when you think about it, real-life meat farming also makes less sense when you think about it tho. Considering they only started to farm, I expect them to make many mistakes. Other reviews are being put off by sexual objectification, but that's the point, farmers objectify the livestock, in this case, themselves.

There's a ton struggling to wrap their head around what's happening, it might be harder to grasp not knowing about the meat industry in the first place, it's as disgusting as in the novel.

The messy development the main character goes through is fun to witness. There's a ton of appreciation for nature.  

The ending doesn't wrap it up in a satisfying way, it felt like it could have gone on for a bit more. This universe could be expanded and explored more. Overall it's a well-crafted, enjoyable read tho.

The novel centres around a female character, Isserly, who seems to be obsessed with picking up male hitch-hikers, as long as they are muscular and fit. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to realise that Isserly's motives are rather unusual.

Under the skin

Jade Flynn

Interesting perspective on what it means to be human with an underlying conversation on vegetarianism. Don't read the blurb even though it only describes the bare bones of what this novel offers in terms of plot. Fans of Murakami would probably enjoy this, even though as a fan myself, I found this a bit 'out there'. I'm very curious about picking up Faber's The Book of Strange New Things somewhere in the future.

Narah Quinn

This dinky (less than 300 pages) book was my designated challenge book for the month, and although I finished it last Sunday, it has taken me until now to even half way formulate a review of it, and even this I have done in stages as ideas have come to me. 
So lets take a (still vague) look at this thought proviking little wonder which I give 4/5 stars for the reading and 12/10 for the thinking!

Written in 2000 (which I did not know initially) released again with a new introduction in 2011 and the copy I have released in 2017, you may be forgiven for feeling that it was a little old fashioned in places. Not everyone had a mobile, it was easier to be anonymous and generally everything had an older feel to it (including the band references etc) but to my mind, this actually all just contributed to the ‘otherness’ of it, so maybe reading it 2 decades after it was written is a benefit to the story itself. 

Our main protagonist is Isserley and she is a human being. At least in the world inhabited here, which is earth, up in the highlands of Scotland, somewhere north of Inverness. But the ‘Vodsel’ hitch-hikers she picks up are humans as we know ourselves, and I don’t want to give too much away – but there is something very strange going on, and to be honest, even having finished the book, I am not 100% sure what in all the worlds was going on. 

I feel like it was a really clever thought project on how we as humans farm animals, deemed less than ourselves, for food, with little regard to their care and living conditions in their often brief lives. Given it was written a year before the foot and mouth outbreak here in the UK which led to the mass culling of millions of sheep, pigs, and cows in a bid to stop the spread, I can’t help but feel that the view of one particular ‘human’ – Vess Jr. – that eating meat is not all we were led to believe seems a little prophetic in the way the market and industry changed as a result. 

The one thing I really felt through the whole book was Isserleys discomfort, her frustration, her trauma, and her disgust at herself physically for what had been done to her so that she could catch and supply Vodsels as required. 

I have been thinking about the book all week, its certainly one that stays with you long past reading, but I have struggled to put into any kind of real sense, or sentence, how I feel about the whole thing, or indeed, what was happening. What I can tell you, is that it is wonderfully written, and that if you give it a go, you will be left thinking about it long after you finish it. 

Also, if you have ever been inclined to do so, you may want to reconsider hitch-hiking, it really isn’t safe, you may just end up like the Vodsels in the story.

I read The Crimson Petal and the White a decade ago, and was entranced, so I desperately wanted to love the book. And I saw some flashes as I read, but not enough to keep me reading. 

The book is a detective story, and the reader is the detective. Faber starts by placing a seemingly normal woman in a seemingly normal circumstance, which turns very weird very quickly. It only gets weirder with every turn of the page, and as details are slowly, painstakingly revealed, the reader is left to figure out just what the hell is going on. 

Only it happens a bit too slowly, and with a character a bit too murky to care about. I stopped reading halfway through. I may return eventually, but for now, there's too much great stuff out there to be read to settle for a mediocre story.

Under the Skin

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