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A review by kathleen_in_oslo
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
5.0
I came across this book thanks to a recommendation from Alexis Hall. His review is a love letter; it is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/583035492?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Skin Lane is an intense, harrowing, ultimately incredibly moving book that is impossible to categorize and impossible to forget. Mr F is a furrier, living alone, keeping himself to himself, moving to and from his job each day (the same job for 33 years, a job at which he excels, where he is respected but perhaps not liked) - everything highly regulated and routine, exactly as it should be. The first chapter opens by describing his soon-to-be 47-year-old body and then taking us in precise, contained language through his daily routine, from the moment he gets out of bed until his return to his small, spare flat at the end of the day. It's both scientifically observed and incredibly intimate; the latter being reinforced by how the narrator is constantly bringing the reader in, sharing observations, making us complicit, as when chapter 2 opens with "Mr F lived, you will not be surprised to hear, on his own." The reader is left with the impression of a very controlled, very lonely man - an impression that, once established, the narrator then undermines: "But it would be a mistake for you to think of Mr F as unhappy. If anyone had ever asked him if he felt old-fashioned or lonely or hidden away, he would have never have dreamt of answering yes. Far from it." Mr F categorically rejects pity or concern, something that recurs throughout the book through his disdain, even fear, of the simplest possible question: "Are you alright, Mr F?"
Into this ordered existence comes a dream (nightmare, but never referred to as such), exactingly and brutally described, of Mr F coming home to find a naked, faceless young man strung up in his bathroom. The dream recurs, exactly the same in all its specifics, quickly becoming an obsession. "Where have you come from", Mr F demands of the dream:
Where have you come from
Where have you been...
From his normal routine of never looking, never making eye contact, avoiding the human crush as much as possible on his route to and from work, Mr F starts observing, looking for traces of the man (boy) in his dream among the men that surround him. And then Beauty enters the scene: the young, beautiful, spoiled, callow, cocksure nephew and heir apparent of the owner of the company, apprenticed to learn a bit about the manufacturing side of the trade before moving to management. From the moment Beauty appears, we know a confrontation is looming.
"Where have you come from:
Where the hell have you come from?
"As always with Mr F, the answer to his question also comes in the form of a sentence. He can actually hear it - whispered, right in his ear. Because, you see, suddenly, everything fits. This young man is exactly the right size, the right build and the right shape. The hands sharpening the blade are just delicate enough, and his hair - well, you always need a good working light when you're matching pelts, and fortunately the light from the long window is strong this late April morning, and as it catches his hair just where it curls slightly above the collar, it makes it clear that it is an exact match; an exact match for the hair Mr F sees spread across the harsh white enamel of this bathtub at four o'clock every other morning of his strange and tortured life."
Slowly, steadily, Mr F becomes more and more consumed by his obsession - the dream and Beauty as a corporeal being becoming intrinsically connected, inseparable. This slide to obsession is made even more dislocating by the compelling, articulate, expert descriptions against which it is counterpoised: the intricate details of working with skins; the sense of time and place in which the story is immersed; the few, perfectly sketched colleagues Mr F interacts with; even the weather (the cold, the heat, the storms) that make reading this an almost physical sensation. And all the time, the reader is infused with both a sense of dread - but also immense sympathy.
This is so cleverly done. We the readers are being played like a fiddle. The narrator even tells us so, quite early on, in a way that, again, makes us complicit in our own manipulation:
"When a man is solitary, people always want an explanation, don't they - have you noticed that? Especially if he ends up doing something notable, committing a crime for instance, or even just surviving to a very old age. At some point in the conversation, someone always says, I wonder what made him that way?"
(Note the juxtaposition between options - committing a crime versus surviving to a very old age - which do we think the more likely?)
And yes, we do look for an explanation. Scattered through the book are small fragments, memories, of Mr F's lonely upbringing in a motherless household with two much-older brothers and a distant father. These memories, glimpses, are fuzzy, obtuse. Could Mr F have been abused? Is that why? Is this why he is still a virgin? Is that why he is taken by this obsession? Or is it, as the narrator also suggests, less about what did happen and more about what didn't:
"And perhaps even more than the words, it is the silences. They aren't necessarily sinister or malicious in intention; no one means them to maim or deny. When he was little, for instance, eight or perhaps nine, how Mr F used to stare all the time at his older brothers - O, how that little boy used to love being allowed to stay up and watch them getting dressed on a Saturday night! He'd stand in the bathroom doorway in his pyjamas, keeping quiet like he'd been told to, and stare, fascinated, while they took it in turns to strip down to their vests and shave. He loved everything about it; the unwrapping of the brand-new razor blade from its mysterious little paper envelope; the careful whipping up of the soap with the little badger-bristle brush; the silent concentration. The way the white suds were mysteriously flecked with black when the razor got wiped on the little squares of newspaper. They way they smiled at him and said You wait. You just wait, our kid. You'll find out... one day. (....) Yes; maybe it's in the silences, the silences in which we imagine the answers to the questions that we never dared ask, that the damage is first done. Who knows."
This is so fucking good it makes me want to cry. Because this is about so much more than Mr F lacking a template for an intimate or sexual relationship. It's about his utter inability to even imagine, much less extend himself permission to be, a sexual being at all - inextricably connected to him being a sexual being attracted to other men. It is about absence, in the silence of which you just accept what you (think you) know - however limited, however constrained - unable to articulate the audacity of an alternative. And this is where it leads: at the age of 47, reading a newspaper story detailing the passage of the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967 (which for the first time decriminalized "homosexual acts between two consenting adults over the age of 21" in England and Wales), reacting thus:
"As it was, Mr F took one look at the headline and decided that the article couldn't possibly be about him. After he'd spent barely a minute scanning it, he turned sedately (no one was watching him; he'd checked) back to page four, which was where they always told you what was going to be on the radio that evening."
I guess this could be read as denial, with its attendant feelings of irritation, or sympathy, or anger, or shame. And it is denial - otherwise why would Mr F check to make sure no one was watching his reaction to this particular article? But it's also a bone-deep acceptance of impossibility. It is bereft. From the same paragraph as above:
"For some reason, the young journalist who had written it had seen fit to mention the fact that the House hadn't risen from its debate until nearly half past six in the morning - until 6.21 a.m., in fact. What a relief it must have been for them all, Mr F thought, to step out into the fresh morning air after having had to talk about all of that nonsense all night long. He always loved the sensation of stepping out onto an empty pavement first thing on a summer morning, before it got too hot. Before London got really going, and the streets were still cool and quiet. Before all the voices started. Before you realised that nothing was ever going to change."
But it does change. It does. The searing confrontation comes. The flames consume. A new idea is planted. Change is sudden. And it is slow. And it does come.
So. Read this book. It is amazing. It will change you.
Skin Lane is an intense, harrowing, ultimately incredibly moving book that is impossible to categorize and impossible to forget. Mr F is a furrier, living alone, keeping himself to himself, moving to and from his job each day (the same job for 33 years, a job at which he excels, where he is respected but perhaps not liked) - everything highly regulated and routine, exactly as it should be. The first chapter opens by describing his soon-to-be 47-year-old body and then taking us in precise, contained language through his daily routine, from the moment he gets out of bed until his return to his small, spare flat at the end of the day. It's both scientifically observed and incredibly intimate; the latter being reinforced by how the narrator is constantly bringing the reader in, sharing observations, making us complicit, as when chapter 2 opens with "Mr F lived, you will not be surprised to hear, on his own." The reader is left with the impression of a very controlled, very lonely man - an impression that, once established, the narrator then undermines: "But it would be a mistake for you to think of Mr F as unhappy. If anyone had ever asked him if he felt old-fashioned or lonely or hidden away, he would have never have dreamt of answering yes. Far from it." Mr F categorically rejects pity or concern, something that recurs throughout the book through his disdain, even fear, of the simplest possible question: "Are you alright, Mr F?"
Into this ordered existence comes a dream (nightmare, but never referred to as such), exactingly and brutally described, of Mr F coming home to find a naked, faceless young man strung up in his bathroom. The dream recurs, exactly the same in all its specifics, quickly becoming an obsession. "Where have you come from", Mr F demands of the dream:
Where have you come from
Where have you been...
From his normal routine of never looking, never making eye contact, avoiding the human crush as much as possible on his route to and from work, Mr F starts observing, looking for traces of the man (boy) in his dream among the men that surround him. And then Beauty enters the scene: the young, beautiful, spoiled, callow, cocksure nephew and heir apparent of the owner of the company, apprenticed to learn a bit about the manufacturing side of the trade before moving to management. From the moment Beauty appears, we know a confrontation is looming.
"Where have you come from:
Where the hell have you come from?
"As always with Mr F, the answer to his question also comes in the form of a sentence. He can actually hear it - whispered, right in his ear. Because, you see, suddenly, everything fits. This young man is exactly the right size, the right build and the right shape. The hands sharpening the blade are just delicate enough, and his hair - well, you always need a good working light when you're matching pelts, and fortunately the light from the long window is strong this late April morning, and as it catches his hair just where it curls slightly above the collar, it makes it clear that it is an exact match; an exact match for the hair Mr F sees spread across the harsh white enamel of this bathtub at four o'clock every other morning of his strange and tortured life."
Slowly, steadily, Mr F becomes more and more consumed by his obsession - the dream and Beauty as a corporeal being becoming intrinsically connected, inseparable. This slide to obsession is made even more dislocating by the compelling, articulate, expert descriptions against which it is counterpoised: the intricate details of working with skins; the sense of time and place in which the story is immersed; the few, perfectly sketched colleagues Mr F interacts with; even the weather (the cold, the heat, the storms) that make reading this an almost physical sensation. And all the time, the reader is infused with both a sense of dread - but also immense sympathy.
This is so cleverly done. We the readers are being played like a fiddle. The narrator even tells us so, quite early on, in a way that, again, makes us complicit in our own manipulation:
"When a man is solitary, people always want an explanation, don't they - have you noticed that? Especially if he ends up doing something notable, committing a crime for instance, or even just surviving to a very old age. At some point in the conversation, someone always says, I wonder what made him that way?"
(Note the juxtaposition between options - committing a crime versus surviving to a very old age - which do we think the more likely?)
And yes, we do look for an explanation. Scattered through the book are small fragments, memories, of Mr F's lonely upbringing in a motherless household with two much-older brothers and a distant father. These memories, glimpses, are fuzzy, obtuse. Could Mr F have been abused? Is that why? Is this why he is still a virgin? Is that why he is taken by this obsession? Or is it, as the narrator also suggests, less about what did happen and more about what didn't:
"And perhaps even more than the words, it is the silences. They aren't necessarily sinister or malicious in intention; no one means them to maim or deny. When he was little, for instance, eight or perhaps nine, how Mr F used to stare all the time at his older brothers - O, how that little boy used to love being allowed to stay up and watch them getting dressed on a Saturday night! He'd stand in the bathroom doorway in his pyjamas, keeping quiet like he'd been told to, and stare, fascinated, while they took it in turns to strip down to their vests and shave. He loved everything about it; the unwrapping of the brand-new razor blade from its mysterious little paper envelope; the careful whipping up of the soap with the little badger-bristle brush; the silent concentration. The way the white suds were mysteriously flecked with black when the razor got wiped on the little squares of newspaper. They way they smiled at him and said You wait. You just wait, our kid. You'll find out... one day. (....) Yes; maybe it's in the silences, the silences in which we imagine the answers to the questions that we never dared ask, that the damage is first done. Who knows."
This is so fucking good it makes me want to cry. Because this is about so much more than Mr F lacking a template for an intimate or sexual relationship. It's about his utter inability to even imagine, much less extend himself permission to be, a sexual being at all - inextricably connected to him being a sexual being attracted to other men. It is about absence, in the silence of which you just accept what you (think you) know - however limited, however constrained - unable to articulate the audacity of an alternative. And this is where it leads: at the age of 47, reading a newspaper story detailing the passage of the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967 (which for the first time decriminalized "homosexual acts between two consenting adults over the age of 21" in England and Wales), reacting thus:
"As it was, Mr F took one look at the headline and decided that the article couldn't possibly be about him. After he'd spent barely a minute scanning it, he turned sedately (no one was watching him; he'd checked) back to page four, which was where they always told you what was going to be on the radio that evening."
I guess this could be read as denial, with its attendant feelings of irritation, or sympathy, or anger, or shame. And it is denial - otherwise why would Mr F check to make sure no one was watching his reaction to this particular article? But it's also a bone-deep acceptance of impossibility. It is bereft. From the same paragraph as above:
"For some reason, the young journalist who had written it had seen fit to mention the fact that the House hadn't risen from its debate until nearly half past six in the morning - until 6.21 a.m., in fact. What a relief it must have been for them all, Mr F thought, to step out into the fresh morning air after having had to talk about all of that nonsense all night long. He always loved the sensation of stepping out onto an empty pavement first thing on a summer morning, before it got too hot. Before London got really going, and the streets were still cool and quiet. Before all the voices started. Before you realised that nothing was ever going to change."
But it does change. It does. The searing confrontation comes. The flames consume. A new idea is planted. Change is sudden. And it is slow. And it does come.
So. Read this book. It is amazing. It will change you.