The Lost Memory of Skin

by

Paperback, 416 pages

English language

Published Nov. 17, 2012 by The Clerkenwell Press.

ISBN:
978-1-84668-576-7
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3 stars (3 reviews)

Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, a young man must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and reoffending sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and …

2 editions

reviewed The Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Review of 'The Lost Memory of Skin' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

2 1/2 stars
This started off as a pretty good read then somewhere in the middle the plot became convoluted and nonsensical. It painted a picture of a small subculture of society that I never gave much thought to before, so that was good. But the whole spy and double agent thing with the Professor was kooky and unrealistic. I never did understand or care about the Professor, though I did kind of get what the Kid was all about. I guess sex offenders DID live under the causeway and really, where else did they have to go? Book could have been better without the unbelievable side plot with the whole Professor intrigue thing which never was resolved one way or the other. IMHO of course.

reviewed The Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Review of 'The Lost Memory of Skin' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I love [a:Russell Banks|15128|Russell Banks|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1275844031p2/15128.jpg]. He's got this way fo writing that is deep and thought provoking while also being entertaining and relatively easy to read. It's like brain candy for smart people. Light reading, but not.
This book was a joy to read for the first 4/5ths of it. Great character development, a good plot that moves along at the right pace but is moved in a unique manner. EG: it's not just this happens, then that happens and then this happens..... the story is told through some jumps in time, from different perspectives and characters do grow and change, appropriately.

All that said, the last 1/5th of the book it suddenly became this weird mystery that comes out of nowhere. Although it's point as a writerly device makes sense (I don't want to give it away so I won't explain that much more), the actual writing in this …

reviewed The Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Review of 'The Lost Memory of Skin' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

The best thing about this book is how deftly Banks changes the focus of the novel. It goes from being about the Professor trying to investigate the Kid (a sex offender who lives under a causeway) to being about the Kid trying to learn more about the Professor. The shift is so subtle that it's barely noticeable. It's a testament to Banks' skill as a writer that he can so easily change the direction of a novel when he's already 200-300 pages into the story.