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The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric (view source)
Revision as of 09:41, 9 April 2010
, 09:41, 9 April 2010no edit summary
Could I just do a little dance? Would you mind? I loved ''The Book of Human Skin''. It's truly wonderful - vivid, immediate, clever, peopled with wonderful characters, the sweep of history and the power of landscape. When you finish it, you really do want to stand up, do a little jig, and say, hey, that was fantastic. Told through multiple narrators, it's about skin - how a person's life is written upon it, how other people get under it, how we use and abuse it. Minguillo collects skin. Doctor Santo takes care of skin. Sor Loreta abuses hers in holy anorexia and scourging. And Marcella's skin is luminous enough to show her core of radiant inner beauty, no matter what horrors are perpetrated upon her.
It's a massive book in scope, strength and history and it took me a week to read it - not because it was dense or difficult, but because rushing would have felt like such a disservice. The research is absolutely awesome and there's such a powerful intelligence behind it, but these things don't interfere with the characters or narrative and there's never a feeling - as there is with some books - that you might not really be quite good enough to read it. Lovric bundles up her cleverness and her knowledge and uses it to delight, not confound. Fans will be glad to learn that the artist Cecilia Cornaro from previous Lovric books gets a great supporting role - and indeed there isn't a character that will leave you unmoved. It has some of the clearest fictional voices that I've read in a very long time. My favourite was Gianni's - rough, goodhearted, self-deprecating, and the kind of friend we all wish we had.
Highly, highly recommended.