Skin

De: Kathe Koja

Narrado por: Suzanne T. Fortin

Tess welds metal. Bibi molds flesh. Together, they make art that moves, dances, burns, and bleeds, and the Surgeons of the Demolition become the hottest ticket in town. But Bibi wants more, always more, no matter who gets hurt. And Tess needs to burn, no matter what.

Thirty years ago, "Skin" changed the landscape of dark fiction forever. And now the girls are back in town.

©2013 Kathe Koja (P)2019 David N. Wilson

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A dark and frightening work by a major talent whose prose reads like a collaboration between Clive Barker and William S. Burroughs. Highly recommended." (Library Journal)

"Humorless novel about art punks in an unnamed present-day city...the novel, like the art of the characters it portrays, is a sustained exercise in style over substance." (Publishers Weekly)

"The language Koja employs is fresh and astonishing, harsh yet beautiful." (Washington Post Book World)

Mixed feelings on this one.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

I really have mixed feelings on this one. Taking into consideration that the written book was published in 1993, the material it covers would have been very edgy, shocking and alot of taboo topics still at that time. With the exposure that we have today and the things that are much more normal it is much less shocking in many ways. Disturbing, still on many levels, but the shock factor is very much numbed.

The flow of this is very choppy. It was like a very long run on sentence. The story was hard to follow at times and switched topics without pause or resolution to the situation at hand. I was not a fan of the style of writing.

The narrator did a good with the story. Emotion appropriate, pleasant to listen to.

I will have to give three stars. Was an interesting story, though not as shocking as I expected. I am not a fan of the style of writing at all.

Skin Review

For the most part, I liked Skin. It's different than anything read or listened to ever before, still worth the time, and four stars for performance and story.

Good story and narration

A strange love story between a metal sculptor and a performance artist who has an unhealthy obsession with body modification
Suzanne does a great job narrating and has a very pleasant voice
Different from the horror I usually read I’m glad I got to check this one out
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review

Spartan race through a Gwar show at an art gallery

Kathe Koja's writing is poetry not prose. Listeners that look at the Demoiselles D'avigion and don't see art may be in for a disappointment. Then again if you don't see the violent sexist exoticism in Picasso's painting you may also fail to appreciate this detailed, fast-paced horror-thriller. Koja approaches prose like an artist-poet; knowing mastery of language is not synonymous implementation. the book is not supposed to be a comfortable read. It is discriptively and structurally anxious emotional and sensual horrifying and beautiful; Certainlty not Renaissance beautiful.

My single complaint is the reader. the book isn't easy. but there are one or two places where she gets so caught in the fast pacing that the telling becomes difficult to deCIPHER (I couldn't stop myself [MAKE THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION NOW, PLEASE!), so I needed to rewind.

...It is Your Flesh We Want To Experience...

The story reads like someone who has ADHD took drugs and wrote it. The style is like something I have never come across and it takes a bit to get used to. I liked the haptic analogous comparisons for descriptions that are peppered throughout each paragraph. It felt like a story wrapped around a lot of incomplete sentences that only exist to modify the narrative. I tend to agree with publisher’s weekly in that this was an exercise in style over substance. While I think the style was perfectly fitting for the substance that was provided, I would have liked a little bit more from it.

The two main characters, Bibi and Tess, remind me of Julianne Moore’s interruption of Carolee Schneemann with her character of Maude in The Big Lebowski. Even their sycophants reminded me of Maude’s groupies. Bibi and Tess are a very sexually frustrated couple as their relationship is quite rocky. Their frustrations shape the novel as well as their art. The art, which is a big part of the story, is the part that interested me the most. Not necessarily the art itself, but the lifestyle of the artists. It reminded me of the underground dark music venues where everyone dressed up like they were in a Marilyn Manson video and put on a show even though they weren’t the main event. The gothic nature of the art and their daily lives was written exactly as I think of that genre and life.

Suzanne T. Fortin did a great job narrating the book. I think she did a great job with the style of the book and her voice was perfect for the characters. She definitely made the book a lot easier to listen to as I don’t think my internal voice could have kept up with the style.

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.