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Sign up todayUnder the Skin
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Hailed as "original and unsettling, an Animal Farm for the new century" (Wall Street Journal), this debut novel lingers long after the last page has been turned.
A "fascinating psychological thriller" (Baltimore Sun), this entrancing novel introduces Isserley, a female driver who scouts the Scottish highlands for male hitchhikers with big muscles. She herself is tiny—like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, Isserley listens to her passengers as they open up to her, revealing clues about who might miss them should they disappear—and then she strikes. What happens to her victims next is only part of a terrifying reality.
At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory: our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion. A grotesque and comical allegory and a surreal representation of contemporary society run amok, Under the Skin was internationally received as the arrival of an exciting talent, rich and assured.
Michel Faber’s work has been published in numerous countries and has received several literary awards. He is the author of The Crimson Petal and the White, a New York Times bestseller, and Under the Skin, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread award.
Fiona Hardingham is a British-born actress, singer, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. On stage, she appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her comedic one-woman show The Dark Show. She has also starred in the dark-comedy short film The Ballerino. She earned a BA honors degree in performing arts from Middlesex University, London, and also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Reviews
“A coolly imaginative and shocking novel.”
“A wonderful book—painful, lyrical, frightening, brilliant…I couldn’t put it down.”
“The fantastic is so nicely played against the day-to-day that one feels the strangeness of both.”
“Faber constructs a compelling, unusual tale about species difference and the limits of compassion. Under the Skin blends elements of science fiction, grotesque comedy, horror, and thriller into a genre-jumping meditation.”
“Original and unsettling, an Animal Farm for the new century…Michel Faber is a strong, moral voice, and this first novel promises great things for the future.”
“A ride deep into a misanthropic hinterland.”
“A satiric novel eerie and touching in equal parts…Under the Skin sits squarely within the tradition of the British satire, and one is bound to recall the features of Swift’s boorish Yahoos…and peaceful Eloi of H. G. Wells’ dark, technological century’s-end fantasy, The Time Machine.”
“A fascinating psychological thriller…[that] hovers between the real and the fantastic.”
“An extraordinary book that touches on the most profound issues of the human condition.”
“[Under the Skin] uses devices borrowed from the suspense-thriller and science fiction genres to create a vivid portrait of a world that is both wildly improbable and frighteningly real.”
“A fantastic first novel, a great first novel, so intelligently and beautifully made a book as to deserve a wide readership.”
“Notwithstanding the clever characterization, the real triumph is Faber’s prose. This is a man who could give Conrad a run at writing the perfect sentence.”
“[A] riveting horror novel…Perfectly chilling.”
“Under the Skin is a compulsive read and remains a lyrical and disturbing allegorical meditation on human appetites, morality, and essence.”
“Profound and disturbing.”
“Alternately gorgeous and terrifying, lyrical and brutal, Under the Skin compels and teases…A growing need to turn the pages sneaks up on you…So satisfying and successful.”
“Faber’s pacing here is masterful, with clues precisely dropped and details ominously described…The Dutch-born and Australian-raised Faber is a strange and promising new talent.”
“As suspenseful and creepy as the first third of Psycho. An artful moral parable…in the mode of Brave New World and Animal Farm.”
“A wildly imaginative, scorching, bizarre, and insidious first novel.”
“An eerie debut novel, turns the Scottish Highlands into a landscape from The Twilight Zone…Highly compelling, enhanced by the superbly evoked imagery of the Highlands.”
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