Under the Skin

Another alien novel, but one of the strangest and most profound I’ve read. Isserly drives around in her van in the wilds of Scotland, picking up hitchhikers. But she is no ordinary woman; in fact, she isn’t human at all, but a modified alien tasked with finding humans to be turned into fast food for an alien world.

It is a darkly ironic, strange, and disturbing novel that asks questions about how we treat animals, cleverly reversing its language to refer to humans as aliens and aliens as humans. It felt to me that this book was able to touch… show more.

This is one of the most unsettling books I’ve ever read.

For weeks after finishing it, I would find myself coming back to scenes I remembered and feeling a prickle down the back of my neck. Isserly, the main character of the book, isn’t really a woman but an alien wearing a human suit to draw in her victims while driving around rural Scotland.

I’m Scottish myself, and recently, I found myself feeling a genuine sense of paranoia while out hillwalking and seeing a lone figure in the distance. It’s a hard read, almost sickening at times, but I’m not… show more.

Like all of Michel Faber’s work, Under the Skin sits between genres, carving its own path through a crowded literary landscape.

Set in the Scottish Highlands where the writer lived, and where I sit writing this for you now, this incredibly creepy novel explores the terror of isolation and of dark spaces, but more than this, it unfolds in a way that reveals a true horror at its heart – a horror in which its protagonist is complicit.

An avant-garde film version of the story by Jonathan Glazer is a perfect chaser for when you’ve finished the novel – but… show more.

A bit of a cheat, since the protagonist, Isserley, is actually an alien. But she’s presenting as a woman in the Scottish Highlands, luring male hitchhikers into her red Toyota Corolla. We don’t discover why for quite some time, and when we do, it’s a shocker. The book effortlessly encompasses major themes of difference, injustice, big business, and gender politics without ever being polemical. If you’ve seen the film of the same name, starring Scarlett Johansson, forget it—it’s totally different from the book. Oh, and if you’re not already a vegetarian, this novel might turn you into one.