Michel Faber - Under the Skin

Beschrijving boek

Isserley cruises the roads of the Scottish Highlands sizing up male hitchhikers. She is looking for beefy specimens with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny - like a kid peering up over the steering wheel - and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she is a remarkable and unforgettable character.

Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch - trailer trash and traveling postgraduates, thugs and philosophers. As she drives them deeper and deeper into the mysterious splendors of the Scottish wilds, they open up to her, revealing a complex and varied picture of life on earth - but Isserley is listening for other clues. Clues about who might miss them if they should disappear. If she decides they’re worth the risk, she takes them farther than they ever dreamed of going. But takes them where?

What we see on the surface in this terrifying and yet moving novel is deceiving. Michel Faber takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory - our own moral instincts and the outer boundaries of compassion. Under the Skin is a grotesque and comical allegory, a surreal representation of contemporary society run amok - it announces the arrival of an exciting talent.