Reading Matters

'Under the Skin' by Michel Faber

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 305 pages; 2000.

This may possibly be the most difficult review I've ever had to write. Clearly, given my five-star rating, it's not because the book is bad; on the contrary, it is superb. But to try and write about Michel Faber's Under the Skin without giving away crucial plot spoilers is nigh on impossible.

This is a novel that is cloaked in secrecy — I've yet to come across a review online that gives away the bizarre content or the dramatic ending — and I'm not about to become the first to give it all away. Let me just say that it is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It's intriguing and creepy and defies categorisation and the title is uncannily appropriate, because the story does, indeed, get under the skin...

An unconventional lead character

First, let's meet the main character, Isserley, who is "half Baywatch babe, half little old lady". She drives up and down the A9 in Scotland in her battered red Toyota Corolla and often picks up hitchhikers along the way — well, actually, she seeks them out, but more on that later. This is how one man she picks up describes her:

Fantastic tits on this one, but God, there wasn't much of her otherwise. Tiny — like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. How tall would she be? Five foot one, maybe, standing up. [...] The rest of her was a funny shape, though. Long skinny arms with big knobbly elbows — no wonder her top was long sleeved. Knobbly wrists too, and big hands. [...] Her face had kind of shocked him. It was small and heart-shaped, like an elf in a kiddie's book, with a perfect little nose and a fantastic big-lipped curvy mouth like a supermodel. But she had puffy cheeks and was wearing the thickest glasses he'd seen in his life: they magnified her eyes so much they looked about twice normal size.

So, now that we know that Isserley looks unconventional, I can tell you about her unconventional job — which is to cruise the main roads of Scotland looking for hitchhikers who are "hunks on legs". She wants big men, specifically men with muscles, and when she lures them into her car she can't help "savouring the thought of how superb he'd be once he was naked".

What happens to these men once they've been "caught" — or lured by Isserley's big bosoms, more accurately — is the crux of the novel. And on that score I'm keeping completely schtum. Sorry.

An "issues" novel

As much as I'm loathe to describe Under the Skin as an "issues" novel, it does contain many ethical, moral and political matters that may well force you to rethink your views on everything from Nature to meat consumption, sexual identity to the notion of mercy. How we view the outsider and our attempts to conform and make sense of the world are also key elements — and to what degree do we judge people by appearance and not substance or character.

While the prose style is not particularly elegant or lyrical,  Faber is very good at describing the beauty of the landscape and the rural sights that Isserley sees while she is on the road.

A luminous moat of rainwater, a swarm of gulls following a seeder around a loamy field, a glimpse of rain two or three mountains away, even a lone oystercatcher flying overhead: any of these could make Isserley half forget what she was on the road for.

And you really get a sense of Isserley's pain and hardship, and the sacrifices she has made to be successful in her job. She's a wonderful character — feisty, strong, opinionated and human — and despite her dubious occupation, it's hard not to feel empathy for her.

While the story swings between psychological thriller and macabre horror, with numerous twists and unexpected plot developments, Faber seems to have one hand firmly on the tiller: nothing is overplayed or gratuitous or even fully explained. He takes you on a ride as exciting as Isserley's adventures in her beat up old car and somehow makes you think about the world in a completely different way.

Under the Skin — which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize in 2000 — is definitely one of the most strange and original novels I've ever read. It's also one of the most thrilling and thought-provoking stories I've come across in years — and with all the books I devour, that's really saying something...

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I read this book as part of my year-long Project 1001.
I also chose it for my Riverside Readers book group and was delighted to find that the four other members who made the meeting loved it as much as me — there was certainly a lot to discuss. We awarded it a group score of 9.4 out of 10.

'The Fire Gospel' by Michel Faber

  Fiction - hardcover; Canongate; 213 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The Fire Gospel, due to be published on November 6, is the long-awaited novel from the author of the oh-so delicious (and my favourite book of the year so far) The Crimson Petal and The White.

This new book is part of Canongate's The Myths series, launched in 2005, in which "some of the world's most respected authors re-tell myths in a manner of their own choosing". The Fire Gospel is therefore a reworking of the myth of Prometheus, who supposedly brought the gift of fire to humanity against the wishes of Zeus, who said fire belonged to the gods alone. As punishment Prometheus was chained to a rock and had his liver eaten by an eagle. Charming.

In Faber's hands, the myth takes on a much more modern, and occasionally hilarious, focus. While on a trip to war-torn Iraq, Theo Griepenkerl, an academic from Canada, accidentally discovers nine papyrus scrolls that have lain hidden for two thousand years. He smuggles them back to Toronto and begins to translate them from Aramaic. They turn out to be a secret, never-before-published fifth gospel that has the power to turn Christianity on its head.

Eager for publicity -- and untold riches -- Theo seeks out a publisher willing to take a risk on publishing his sensational discovery. But when every mainstream press turns him down he has to resort to convincing the relatively obscure text-book publisher Elysium that it's worth printing. This is despite the fact that the firm's biggest bestseller so far has been Sing Times Seven, a book written by a Norwegian school teacher about games parents should play with their children to teach them arithmetic.

 'My book isn't about teaching dogs geometry,' Theo reminded him. 'For God's sake, Mr Baum, it's a new Gospel! It's a previously unknown account of the life and death of Jesus, written in Aramaic, the language Jesus himself spoke. In fact, it will be the only Gospel written in Aramaic: the others are in Greek. And it's earlier than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, years earlier. I can't understand why publishers aren't falling over themselves to put it out -- 99.99 per cent of books aren't important, not really. This one is."

When The Fifth Gospel is eventually published, sales go through the roof and Theo becomes a celebrity doing the rounds of talk shows and author signings. Some of the funniest bits occur when Theo checks the reader reviews on Amazon, complete with misspellings and untempered opinions:

Julia Argandona, of Costa Mesa, CA, offered the following appreciation (which '17 of 59' customers apparently found 'helpful'): I haven't read this book yet but I can't wait to read it so I am reviewing it early. The other people on Amazon who say don't read it are brainwashed stooges of the Catholic religion, which has been sexually abusing children for 100's of years. Who needs it? I already LOVE this book.

But it doesn't take long before the wrath of Christians and other religious groups puts his life in danger. He might not have to endure the whole eagles-pecking-his-liver torture to which Prometheus was subjected, but it's not far off...

I laughed a lot while reading this book. It's wicked and provocative. But in some respects it feels a bit too knowing, a bit too clever (I hesitate to use the term smart alec). I got the sense that Faber wasn't just poking fun at religion but was also taking a pop at the publishing game, specifically its obsession with sales figures and marketing. Us readers get a bit of a drubbing too.

The Fire Gospel is a fun read, but it is definitely not in the same league as Faber's previous masterpiece, The Crimson Petal and The White. And if you are religious and easily offended by Jesus spoofs you'd best avoid it altogether.

'The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories' by Michel Faber

   Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 199 pages; 2006.

Having loved Michel Faber's epic Victorian drama The Crimson Petal and the White when I read it recently, I decided to hunt out the sequel. Except The Apple is not actually a sequel but a collection of short stories about characters that featured in The Crimson Petal and the White. As the author points out in the foreword, "You needn't have read that book in order to appreciate this one. The stories are, as stories should be, little worlds of their own".

While I can't disagree with this, I do think it helps if you're at least familiar with the "original" book because it puts the stories into context. And part of the joy of reading The Apple is becoming re-acquainted with characters you already know and love, or, in some cases, rather detest!

This collection is obviously far less ambitious in scope than Faber's magnus opus -- it's less than 200 pages and the typeface in my edition is especially large, for a start --  but it still captures the very essence of Victorian London which made the first book such a wonderful, evocative read.

There are seven stories all told, and each one features a key figure first introduced in The Crimson Petal. However, all is not as it might seem: this is not a chronological follow-on. Instead, we get glimpses of some character's lives before we first met them and others we meet several years down the line.

If you want to know what happens to William Rackham and his kidnapped daughter, Sophie, then you won't be disappointed. But if you're dying to find out what happened to the prostitute Sugar -- and judging by Faber's foreward, he got boxes of letters from frustrated readers demanding just that -- then it's no secret to say you're not going to get any closure here. While Sugar does feature in the opening story Christmas in Silver Street, this is a story about her younger self.

Other familiar characters that star in their own short story include the maid Clara, Mr Bodley and Emmaline Fox. 

Each story is a quick, satisfying read, but taken as a whole this is not the type of book that can in any way represent or recreate the wondrous beauty of the 833-page novel that inspired it. This is really for diehard fans only and even then you may find it a little disappointing. (I did, however, very much enjoy the 11-page foreword in which Faber shares some of the very many letters he received upon publication of The Crimson Petal, but whether it's worth buying this collection just for that isn't really for me to say.)

'The Crimson Petal and the White' by Michel Faber

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 833 pages; 2003.

Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White is, quite simply, an astounding literary accomplishment. Within its 800-plus pages unfolds a story that draws the reader into another time and place so expertly that you feel as if you, too, are treading the streets of Victorian-era London.

Critics have quite rightly compared Faber's epic novel with that other great Victorian writer Charles Dickens, but as Kathryn Hughes pointed out in the Guardian this one is not tempered by the social mores that prevented Dickens from writing freely. Faber's book, a 21st century novel set in the 19th century, is lewd and bawdy, gritty and real, and there's no pretense at keeping things in check lest he offend a delicate reader.

Indeed, one could argue that delicate readers should probably steer clear of this epic tale about a prostitute's rise and fall in Victorian England. His central character, 19-year-old Sugar, is infamous for turning the kinds of tricks other whores refuse to do. And while Faber may not go into great detail regarding those tricks, he certainly does not shy away from letting us into the sordid, carnal world of an 1870s streetwalker. The language can, at times, be very crude -- and if you are offended by the "C-word" you'd be wise to stay away.

But despite the constant debauchery (for want of a better word) that fills the pages, The Crimson Petal and the White never feels pornographic, nor sensationalist. Instead, because Faber has such an eye for detail and is a stickler for historical accuracy, the novel feels like an intoxicating trip into a world that few of us could ever hope -- or want -- to visit.

The London he describes is rich and vivid, peppered with beggars and street urchins, while the constant stench of human waste and horse dung fills the air.

Cabs are trotting backwards and forwards, thickly bearded gentlemen in dark clothing dash across their path, sandwich-board men patrol the gutters and, over there, a trio of street-sweepers are standing over a drain, cramming the accumulated porridge of snow-slush, dirt and horse-dung down through the grille with jabs of their brooms. Even as they toil, an equipage bristling with provincial businessmen jingles by, leaving a steamy festoon of turd in its wake.

The story is set over the course of 1875. It begins with William Rackham, the reluctant heir to a perfumery business, hunting out the services of a notorious whore whose name he discovered in an annual brothel directory. When he eventually meets the alluring Sugar, he finds himself as equally attracted to her brain as to her body.

Sugar, as it turns out, is more than the sum of her parts. She's a would-be writer working on a novel about a woman who carries out the most gruesome acts of revenge on the men who have paid to sleep with her. Sugar is also highly intelligent but has simply never been given the opportunity to rise above the mire to which she's become accustomed.

Over the course of many rendezvous, Sugar and William establish an easy rapport, both in the bed and out of it, and before long William finds that the relationship has given him the impetus he needs to take control of the perfumery business he had so long despised. When he begins making his fortune, he "buys" Sugar and installs her in a secret pad, supplying her with a weekly wage and all the material possessions she could ever hope for.

But all is not well at home. His wife is going mad and his young daughter's governess is planning on leaving the household. Likewise, Sugar is desperately lonely and begins to wonder if her sexual powers over William are beginning to wane...

She's tired of waiting for William. Days go by without a visit; then, when he does call on her, he has a mind full of concerns from his secret life -- secret from her, that is. All his friends and family know him better than she, and they haven't any use for the knowledge; it's so unfair!

To say much more would mean revealing crucial plot spoilers, which I am loathe to do, but essentially both characters hatch plots -- with drastic and unpredictable consequences -- to ensure that they can continue to stay together as a kind of surreptitious "husband and wife".

Intertwined with this major narrative thread is a series of other minor storylines involving secondary characters which serve to make the book an especially rich, multi-layered read.

There's William's brother, Henry, a pious would-be preacher and his will-they-or-won't-they friendship with an older woman, Emmaline Fox. Mrs Fox, a widow, works for the Rescue Society, an organisation that helps give former prostitutes proper jobs, and thereby knows Sugar and the circles she once operated in.

Mrs Fox's father is also a minor character. He's an arrogant and somewhat creepy doctor who tends to William's wife and pushes for her to be taken into a sanatorium, because how else do you treat a woman who is clearly suffering from a yet-to-be-diagnosed case of post-natal depression? 

William's two bachelor friends, Bodley and Ashwell (or Bashley and Oddwell, as William is want to call them in moments of extreme drunkenness), serve as foils to his conscience, often encouraging him to do outrageous things, and together they add a dollop of devilish humour to the story.

But despite the completely absorbing tale that I found The Crimson Petal and the White to be, it's not without its (tiny) faults. There's a rather annoying omnipresent narrator who can sometimes grate, although the following sentence did make me laugh out loud:

So there you have it: the thoughts (somewhat pruned of repetition) of William Rackham as he sits on his bench in St James's Park. If you are bored beyond endurance, I can offer only my promise that there will be fucking in the very near future, not to mention madness, abduction, and violent death.

The good thing is that this narrator does ease himself out of the story quite early on, and only makes his appearance known again at the very end, so it's tolerable if you don't really like that sort of thing. In any case, you shouldn't let it put you off reading this wonderful, boisterous and hugely entertaining novel. It sounds ludicrous to say it, but at 833 pages it almost seemed too short and the near-perfect ending came almost too soon for my liking.