I doubt I could have entered into Michel Faber’s world with a better book. I started at the very beginning (and what a début!) with Under the Skin. It really was like entering a different world. It’s the type of book that you have to put down at intervals, to have a stunned couple of recovery breaths.

Isserley, the unusual anti-heroine/ heroine, is introduced in the first paragraph as a driver sizing up hitch-hikers. She’s “looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her”.

Less than a page in and the reader is already feeling uncomfortable. There’s something unsettling about this book. And this feeling intensifies as the book progresses. With each new hitch-hiker, another piece of the puzzle is revealed. Continue reading →