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Skin
By Kathe Koja
Reviewed by Rob Gates
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
At the end of the 1980's, horror was a dying genre. Stuck in neutral
with tired old plots and lifeless stories, it just seemed to be waiting
for someone to pull the plug. But like the terrifying beasts of old,
the horror genre fought back; and it did so with people like Kathe Koja.
The power of the reborn horror movement was in the acknowledgement that
blood did not scare us any more, monsters didn't scare us anymore - what
scared us was ourselves and the things we could do and think. Sure,
the weird and macabre unknown, the world of vampires and beasties, has
its place in horror; but for horror to come alive again it had to be infused
with emotion - the emotion of people. The biggest purveyor of this
new breed of horror was Dell's "Abyss" line of books (long since faded
away). Abyss gave rise to a bevy of new and powerful writers who
could scare the bejezuz out of us - not with blood and gore, but with the
mind. Kathe Koja was one of their biggest breakout stars. Her
first novel, The Cipher, stormed the horror establishment; and she
was well on her way to remaking the genre into not only a scary one, but
a literary one, too. She continued with Bad Brains and followed
that with Strange Angels. Skin is her fourth novel,
and the experience shows.
Skin is the story of two female artists - one a metalsmith and
the other a dancer-cum-performance artist. Both are seeking perfection
through their chosen art; and their collaboration leads to obsession and
beyond. Together they create a horrific mix of humanity and machine,
in a new form of performance art that brings them both to the brink, testing
the boundaries of art. Inevitably, their shared passion for expression
leads them to a physical relationship; and this relationship only serves
to push one of the two into darker realms of body modification, pain, and
oblivion.
As with all of her stories, Koja creeps quietly into the back of our
minds, teasing us with images and actions that each take us one step further
along a dark path - until we suddenly realize that (like our fascination
with accident scenes) we can't turn away, despite the discomfort.
And the reader is made to feel uncomfortable because, after all, there's
only a fine line separating us from Skin's two protagonists; and
that thin line's edges are blurry.
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