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A review by jce
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
5.0
This book was such an emotional gut punch. Jesus. I loved it. There's such a particular delight in reading a book and genuinely feeling that you haven't read anything quite like it before. The narration style was so compelling and vaguely disquieting and also somehow enormously fun? I did not know, at all, where this was going, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the many moments the story basically had me by the throat.
I'm never the biggest plot person generally, and I love when I've read a book and if I explained the plot to someone it would in no way really convey the essence of the story, or the experience of reading it. This book is like that. It's all in the writing, which is startlingly magnetic. I was completely glued to the page. It was just so strange and unsettling and beautiful. There's little I love more than a really odd book and this was just the sort of weirdness that I adore.
Also, I'm feeling a pang of sadness that the book doesn't seem to be in print anymore, because damn, it's really worth reading. Really glad I could get it from the library, but I'm going to buy my own used copy anyway, because this one will need to be re-read, and I'm dying to tab pages and underline favorite parts.
I'm never the biggest plot person generally, and I love when I've read a book and if I explained the plot to someone it would in no way really convey the essence of the story, or the experience of reading it. This book is like that. It's all in the writing, which is startlingly magnetic. I was completely glued to the page. It was just so strange and unsettling and beautiful. There's little I love more than a really odd book and this was just the sort of weirdness that I adore.
Also, I'm feeling a pang of sadness that the book doesn't seem to be in print anymore, because damn, it's really worth reading. Really glad I could get it from the library, but I'm going to buy my own used copy anyway, because this one will need to be re-read, and I'm dying to tab pages and underline favorite parts.