The World Against Her Skin

By: John Thorndike

Narrated by: John Thorndike

Virginia and Joe Thorndike have been married for 22 years, and now she's in love with a surgeon 13 years her junior. She leaves her husband and flies to Miami to start living with Rich Villamano, but there he tells her he has changed his mind and they must go their own ways. In an instant, their four-year affair is over. She takes off in his car, heading north with no luggage, no hope, and no destination. She buys a bottle of gin and drinks it straight. Afraid that she’ll kill herself or someone else on the road, she abandons the car, flies to New York and takes an airport hotel room. She has no home and nowhere to go.

In this biographical novel, much is remembered and much imagined. Flashbacks from Virginia’s youth expose the sexual abuse by her father, an affair with her high school diving coach, and her marriage to a jealous first husband. Virginia’s troubles echo the plight of both Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina in this fearless book about families, love, and loss.

©2021 John Thorndike (P)2022 John Thorndike

Dismal

The reader had the most monotonous voice ever. I managed to get past that but the story was equally boring. A very tedious description of a woman suffering from depression, with little or no redeeming qualities to her story. I only stayed with it to see how she would eventually kill herself.