Under The Skin

* It'll get to you one way or another. Of that there is no doubt Observer * A wonderful book - painful, lyrical, frightening, brilliant ... I couldn't put it down Kate Atkinson Teases and prods the reader up a plethora of literary blind alleys before hauling them screaming towards its final, thrilling destination Daily Telegraph This is a man who could give Conrad a run at writing the perfect sentence Guardian * ... strange, adept, original ... Would that more first novels were as adventurous or as funky and daring in their conception Independent on Sunday Profound and disturbing ... Faber writes superbly Sunday Times * Brilliantly compressed drama of threat and ambiguity ... Recalling writers such as Jim Crace and Russell Hoban, Under the Skin, like Faber's short stories, is an extremely assured and imaginative work Observer * Under the Skin is a shocking and fantastical take on modern humanity The Week * One measure of a book is its stickability, its ability to remain in the mind long after being read. Michel Faber's Under the Skin passes this test with ease, or should that be unease? Faber builds a credible thriller on what seems the shakiest of premises ... Its triumph, however, is that it plays on the mind long after a first reading. It is the best first novel of the year and a worthy successor to Faber's short stories Herald * Astonishingly, this is Michel Faber's first novel. It is audacious, fascinating, repellent and quite unlike anything I have ever read Mail on Sunday * Edgy, accomplished debut ... To describe the bizarre scenario behind this novel would make it sound absurd but in Michel Faber's hands it is a compelling and darkly disorientating tale. Told in sparse, often beautiful prose, Under the Skin defies genre, swerving from parable to science fiction and questioning what makes us human, how we connect to each other, and how we define and treat the 'other'. A refreshing reminder of how good fiction can make our own world seem alien Daily Mail The fantastic is so nicely played against the day-to-day that one feels the strangeness of both ... A remarkable novel New York Times * Under the Skin tattoos the memory with an unholy trinity of hitch-hikers, the Scottish highlands and the extraterrestrial meat-packing industry. Wonderful, grisly and beyond bonkers -- David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS The Week