Under the Skin by Michel FaberUnder the Skin by Michel Faber

Under the Skin

byMichel Faber

Paperback | September 27, 2004

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Michel Faber’s debut novel was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread First Novel Award and received astounding critical acclaim and a cult following. An imaginative, gripping work in a genre of its own, Under the Skin centres around Isserley, a female driver who picks up male hitchhikers with big muscles. A horrifying, heart-thumping ride through dangerous moral territory, Under the Skin is by turns funny, macabre and deeply affecting.

“A fascinating book.... The fantastic is so nicely played against the day-to-day that one feels the strangeness of both.... Remarkable.” The New York Times Book Review

Michel Faber’s first novel, Under the Skin, was a finalist for Britain’s Whitbread Award and nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Award 2002. It has been translated into 17 languages. His acclaimed short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, won the Scottish Arts Council Award. His most recent novel, The Crimson Petal and the White, was an...
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Title:Under the SkinFormat:PaperbackDimensions:304 pages, 8 × 5.31 × 1 inPublished:September 27, 2004Publisher:HarperCollinsLanguage:English

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10:0006393721

ISBN - 13:9780006393726

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Reviews

Rated 4 out of 5 by from Different than the film Quite a haunting, original story. Much different than the film. I enjoyed it, though I do still struggle with some of the imagery of the characters.
Date published: 2017-11-02
Rated 1 out of 5 by from Under The Skin It seemed like a book I'd enjoy, but it ended up being too weird for me.
Date published: 2017-06-19
Rated 3 out of 5 by from Under The Skin It seemed like a great plot line, but it was really weird.
Date published: 2017-06-16
Rated 4 out of 5 by from Moody, atmospheric alien tale in Scotland Now, ever since reading years ago about Johnathan Glazer (director of Sexy Beast and Birth) making this into a feature film, I was intrigued. I bought the book, started reading it...movie came out on BluRay home-video, bought that...then I just stopped ready the book. 60 pages in. Now, 2 years later, I picked it up again a week and a half ago and now I'm happy to say I finally finished it. A cool, little, Scottish-set hitch-hiker/alien seductress novel...very moody and bleak in some ways. I really liked the character of Isserly. I hear the movie is a love it or hate it sorta deal...I think it's more for the arty types as the trailer looks very out there and my kind of thing. I enjoyed this book, very easy read, some gory parts which I like.
Date published: 2016-11-25
Rated 1 out of 5 by from at least 50 Shades Of Grey has a target audience I don't know who I would recommend this to, it's amazing just how dumb and graphic it is. The book comes off as a high school level read, sorta simple and quickly written - "Illegal pharmaceutical substances were freely available, leading to broken windows and females giving birth too young". Brilliant. The book is full of these nonsensical phrases, btw. In saying that though, again, I couldn't recommend this book to anyone under 20 because it does go quite graphic. I'm perplexed. I bought this book because of a book club I'm with, and I feel robbed of time and money. There's a youtube audio version of the book, if you wanna check out the baffling waste of energy it is. I also hear there's a movie version that essentially took the basic idea and ran with it. Run on gentle reader, run on.
Date published: 2016-02-28
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It's a dark surrealistic satire, it's not supposed to be scary Brilliant metaphor for the farming industry and animal cruelty, among other themes raised in this novel. The feature adaptation is only loosely based on this book, the book and the film are quite different.
Date published: 2015-01-10
Rated 1 out of 5 by from Weird, but not really scary The book was different, to say the least. It’s about this “woman” Isserley, who picks up hitchhikers on dark, less-travelled roads. The hitchhiker has to meet a certain criteria. They have to be big, strong males with no one to search for them if they disappear. This story is similar to Animal Farm (by George Orwell) in a way. Isserley belongs to a ’species’ of animal rather than human. This species is wolf-like and they prey and feed off of captured humans. The world is reversed; humans are treated like wild dogs needing to be captured and crated, and the story is told from the perspective of the species doing the crating. Isserley has had several operations so that she can pass as human. She walks on two legs and has had hair removal surgery as well. She doesn’t like walking on two legs as this is unnatural but do the surgeries she can no longer walk on four. As I said before, the story is different - but I wouldn’t say scary. I don’t even remember being ‘thrilled’ by it. I thought there were major plot points missing and Isserley wasn’t overly interesting. I did like the tranquilizing of hitchhikers, that was kind of exciting. Overall I give this a 4 out of 10. It’s readable, and possibly enjoyable - but it’s not fulfilling. Read more at: http://justkickinit.ca/2008/09/27/under-the-skin-by-michel-faber/
Date published: 2008-12-06