Under the skin
Short-listed for the Whitbread Award, this remarkable book defies categorisation. Under the Skin introduces Isserley, a woman obsessed with picking up male hitchhikers – so long as they're well-muscled and alone. But why? As the novel unfolds and the reason becomes clear, the reader is drawn inexorably into a completely unexpected and increasingly terrifying world.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
2mentions
2people
2011–2017years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'll agree that 3x to my ear sounds insane, but so did 2x a few years ago. I've definitely adapted to listening at higher speeds as I've got used to it. I can believe that some people are comfortable with it.
But you're right, sentence structure does play a part. I've listened to Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) and Excession (Iain M Banks) recently and both I had to drop to 2x because I couldn't follow at 2.25x. The latter because of the long ship names that sounded like sentences took too long for my brain to parse out and comprehended, and the quite technical language. The former because of the slightly old fashioned and uncommon language. On the other hand, with another recent book, Under The Skin (Michel Faber), I was totally comfortable at 2.25x. The narrator was nice and clear with no strong accent, and the language was modern and descriptive but not overly complex.
- I've noticed too that when people recommend books or say what they're reading, it's almost never novels. It's either technical, or memoirs.
Here's one novel I just finished rereading that's almost like an anti-Oprah book in that you won't identify with any of the characters, it doesn't build to sweet resolution, it doesn't say great things about the human spirit, yet at the end you feel enobled for having spent time with such a true work of art: Michel Faber's Under the Skin. http://www.amazon.com/Under-Skin-Novel-Michel-Faber/dp/01560...
