BR: Cold Skin (Albert Sanchez Pinol)

Amazon Link: Cold Skin

The back cover reads:

We are never truly far from those we hate. For this very reason, we shall never be truly close to those we love. An appalling fact, I knew it well enough when I embarked. But some truths deserve our attention; others are best left alone.

On a desolate island at the end of the earth a young man discovers there are things more frightening than solitude.

This book was a quick read, enthralling from start to finish, disturbing and haunting. The writing is solid, eloquent and beautiful and I do it little justice by reviewing the book close on two months after having completed it.

The protagonist is a young man who takes on a role as a weather official on an uninhabited Antarctic island far away from any shipping routes or rescue should events turn sour. He is set down by a sea captain who is also there to collect his predecessor, Gruner, except the man is a slobbering, jabbering, semi-naked idiot, senseless and hostile. The captain leaves both men on the island; the deranged Gruner in the lighthouse and the (unnamed) protagonist in a timber hut on the other side of the island.

All is well until nightfall when, from the waves comes creatures that are reptilian in appearance and treacherously homicidal. Unaware of the danger and entirely unprepared, the protagonist survives the first attack with a mix of sheer will and dumb luck. He seeks out Gruner's help, knowing that the other man has weapons and protection in the lighthouse, but his attempt to seek sanctuary is violently rebuffed.

Only when Gruner's secret alliance with one of the reptilian females, Aneris, is revealed, does the protagonist bargain his safety by threatening the other man's 'mate'. Earning himself an unsteady alliance, he shelters in the lighthouse and works with Gruner to stave off attacks by the creatures, which they come to know as Situaca's, a sub-human lifeform.

A complex relationship develops between the two men and Aneris and later with the children of the Situaca who come onto the island in between attacks. The protagonist attempts to establish an alliance with the creatures, recognising that they demonstrate human-like traits and the capability for compassion toward each other. Gruner, however, is unable to appreciate them as anything more than vile enemies and sets off a reaction of violence and brutality that goes on and on for nights on end, wearing the men down and decimating the island.

At the end of the book, only the protagonist is left to greet the sea captain upon his return a year later. By this time all sanity has left and, instead of leaving as any sane man would do or at the very least warning the new weather official of the fate that awaits him, the protagonist stays and takes on the dead Gruner's role -- that of a deranged maniac who disallows the new weather official access to the lighthouse, the only structure on the island that affords shelter from the murderous creatures.

This book was enjoyable and well written, if not somewhat differnet from what I usually read.

Rating: **** out of five.

BR: Boy A (Jonathan Trigell)

In 1993 two ten year old boys abducted a two year old boy, took him to an isolated location where they tortured and murdered him. I remember the case well because it shocked and horrified me, but I never could condemn the children who committed this act even if they had known full well what they were doing. Children do what they have learned, and they cope and manifest their emotions in unpredictable ways. Moreover, these two boys were children and there is no way to predict how they will mature. In my experience, children explore their evil sides at a young age and if left untempered, without discipline and guidance, it’s not unimaginable for them to go too far.

I don’t know if the author was inspired by that case, though it seems likely he was, and I commend and thank him for taking something like this and crafting it into a novel that is both moving and disturbing. I also thank Emily for gifting me this book.

In this novel Jack is Boy A, one of two boys who were convicted of murdering a girl their own age. Jack, which is not his real name, and Boy B were pre-pubescent boys when the murder occurred and both claimed their innocence, accusing the other. As an adult, newly released from a life of juvenile detention and prison, Jack is a naïve innocent, unaccustomed to society, its norms, practices, demands. Terry, his advisor, mentor, father figure and legally assigned protector, introduces him to the new world, a boarding house and job. Nothing is too demanding for a socially acclimatized individual, but to Jack the experiences are daunting. I related to this, in a small way, and felt deeply for Jack’s anxieties.

An example is Jack’s first experience of an automatic washing machine. It stalls as he is cooking a meal for himself, so he goes to tend to the machine thinking it will take just a minute, but it all goes awry.

The switch comes away in his hand, leaving a hole. Jack is staring at it when the water starts pouring out on to the floor. He tries to push the switch, which he sees is really a screw-plug, back into its slot. But he fumbles, and it jumps skittishly away, into the water already flowing behind his knees. As he turns to reclaim the plug, Jack sees the flames snaking out of the grill. They lick dark venom on to the clean white of Kelly’s oven. He’s caught for a moment, unsure which disaster to counter first. The fire makes his choice by grasping at the wallpaper. Still holding the plug, Jack leaps to his bare feet, nearly slipping in the water. He turns off the gas and thrusts the burning grill pan into the sink. The fat spits, hissing onto his hand and cheek, but the flames quickly die. Although the water is barely trickling out now, and the floor is already flooded, he screws the plug back in, as tight as it will go.

He slumps down in the pool of water, covering the washing machine’s still-laughing mouth with his back, and holding his burned cheek with his burned hand.

It’s a comedic scene, but so heartbreaking and indicative of how hard he tries and how little he knows.

As he settles in, slowly making friends, learning what he can and can’t do, living with memories of beatings, victimization, suicide ideation and the unabridged hatred of society because he is a convicted kiddie-killer, Jack must call on his tattered inner strength to keep it all together. Most of all, he must keep his past a secret – tell no-one, be careful of everything he does, don’t drink too much alcohol in case his tongue loosens to reveal the truth. Always in the back of his mind is the only option available to him if it all goes wrong: suicide.

After he picks himself up, Jack shaves with his new cut-throat razor. He holds the blade inwards, stroking it with his thumb, feeling the comforting sharpness, so honed it has to be restrained. The razor wants to sever his skin. That’s why it feels so good to shave with. Jack feels alive this close to the choice. He senses intensely the vertigo of possibility – the fear he might go with the urge to slip into jugular. And, having made his decision, not dying makes him feel stronger.

There are too many scenes to quote, too much about this book that can’t be given credit in such a short review. The writing is literary, poetic and melancholy – all the attributes I adore! On every page is an underlying sense of doom, of every high being met by an eventual low, of the promise of an ending that will tear my heart out.

The further I got into this book, the more nervous I became, and the revelation near the end was enough to dislodge me. I must have known it was a possibility but I’d so unerringly longed to believe that it wasn’t, so much so that when it was spelled out, plain and simple, I had to put the book down and process what that meant in the face of all I knew about Jack and how much I had come to love him.

The ending is unclear, Jack’s fate is unclear and it needs to be so. I like to think he finds peace without dying, but I wonder if ever he can. In a world that wishes you dead, how can you ever find peace?

After reading this book I caught up on the fate of the two boys who had murdered the two year old boy, Martin Bolger. This is one of many links about the case and the current status: http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/bulger.asp

I didn’t even have to think very hard to remember the child’s name, which shows how much the case imprinted on my mind. After reading this book, more than ever I hope that those two boys (now men) can find peace in their lives. I doubt very much that either of them will go on to kill again, but will they ever have happy lives, knowing that the world is waiting for them, or someone who knows the truth about them, to slip up. It’s frightening. One of the most frightening things I can imagine.

Rating: *****+ stars out of five. A must read!

BR: Cutting through skin (Michael McCoy)

The back cover reads:

‘Sometimes I would close my eyes with the tip of the scalpel poised and ready and just feel its progress as it cut through the skin. I’d hold the blade in my hand and press, expectantly and sightlessly through the skin. Feeling the release. Feeling the joy’

With his PhD recently finished, Matthew Bass is adrift in his work as a prosector in the Department of Anatomy. He is attracted to the sexually well-practised Zoe, a fellow cutter with bizarre religious beliefs. Almost willingly, Matt lets lip his grip on reality until, with Zoe’s encouragement, he pushes his newly discovered ideas on life and death to their ultimate extreme.

I chose this book because of the title and the references to the characters being cutters, but they are not the cutters that I am accustomed to so that came as a disappointment.

The novel is written in alternating viewpoints of the four main characters, Matt, Zoe, Frank and Rushworth. Rushworth is Matt’s father and Frank is an academic of similar vintage who is friends with them both, and worried about Matt’s increasingly erratic behaviour. The setting is modern day Melbourne, which was another selling point. It’s refreshing to read novels set in environments I know.

The book opens with Matt walking into a hold-up in progress. The event affects him deeply.

September 22^nd. The day I came to believe was my birthday. My real birthday.

I stopped to get petrol. Pulled up, filled the tank and walked across the concrete from the pump towards the sliding glass doors, petrol fumes rising thickly from my hands in the fat afternoon air. A dog lay asleep just outside the door, her fur twitching easily in her dreams and shining back at me like eddies in a black mirror, before giving way to a row of dry, weathered nipples on her belly. And in her face you could read a perfect, mindless contentment. She was the kind of dog you’d like to whistle into the back of your car and take home with you. To share in some of that mindless contentment.

Maybe five steps from the door I felt a hand on my shoulder, firm and with a purpose to the pressure it exerted, rather than just a blundering push to get me out of the way. Then an instant later there was the gun.

I read this much in the bookstore and decided to buy the book. I don’t regret my purchase, but the story did not pan out as I had imagined. In several places it was bogged down with repetitive prose; characters who engaged in lengthy monologue in their heads, making the reader proxy to their thoughts. Initially I didn’t mind being along for the ride, impressed by the writing style and distinctive imagery, but it eventually grew old.

Also, I lacked the ability to connect with any of the characters in a way that would allow me to care for them, to fear for them, to stand beside them and cheer them on. Aside from the opening chapter – the petrol station hold-up – the remaining chapters were lengthy and dry, driven only by Matt’s unusual behaviour and Zoe’s belief that she was the religious figure Eve and Matt was Adam.

The story took a disturbing direction when Matt’s father dies and Matt breathes in what he believes is the soul of his dying parent. He takes Rushworth’s last breath, seals their lips and sucks it in. If I had been involved with the characters enough to really care about them, then this event would have bothered me greatly, instead it just freaked me out – I mean, who does that!? It’s unnerving.

If it weren’t for the poetic writing style, though arguably a tad overdone, I’d not have finished the book at all. As an example, Matt meets with Frank at the racecourse after having been out of touch for some weeks. This is in Frank’s POV.

‘Morning; Frank,’ he replied, like a working dog. ‘What are we doing here?’

He was all hunkered down on himself as if his bones were chilled through to the marrow. It wasn’t cold, though. No one else was cold. So he had to be hiding something. It wasn’t thermoregulation that was curling him into a ball, it was emotional regulation, you’d have guessed. Or maybe he had his hands stuffed deep in his trouser pockets in an effort to trap the smell from inside his underwear.

I had to smile.

‘What are we doing here?’ I repeated, still grinning. “I thought we could have a chinwag, Matty, that’s what. Sit and natter while God’s most beautiful parade their wares in front of us.’

I stood there in the lower reaches of the grandstand, my arm sweeping across all before us, as if we were in a gallery full of Rembrandts and Picassos and Van Goghs. He sat down next to me, hands still shoved in his trouser pockets and collar turned u against the wind that didn’t blow. He didn’t even look at what I was showing him. Didn’t even know I was trying to show him anything. Not interested in knowing. He gazed at me as though I’d traded my last drop of nous for a bus ticket to an empty circus ground.

The novel definitely is literary in the common sense of the word, being rambling, introspective and explorative of psychology, philosophy and religion, but it lacks an intangible element that would have made it memorable.

Rating: *** out of five