Isserley spends most of her time driving.
But why is she so interested in picking up hitchhikers?
And why are they always male, well-built, and alone?

‘Under The Skin‘ is a bleak, unremittingly grim book that’s as hard to look away from as a car crash in progress. The writing grabbed hold of me and never let go. Geri Halligan’s narration perfectly captured the mood of the piece and the pace of the plot. It was a memorable and disturbing read that I still find myself thinking about weeks later.

I’m not going to reveal the plot because I think that part of the power of the book comes from trying to work out who Isserley is and why she spends most of her time driving on the A9 in Scotland searching for well-built male hitchers to pick up.

‘Under The Skin‘ has a lot of the attributes of Speculative Fiction Thriller. It’s clear from the beginning that this is not a tale of everyday folk who cruise Scottish roads looking for men. There is something off about Isserley and that sense of not-what-she-seems-to-be grows as the reader spends more time with her. She is on some kind of mysterious covert mission that seems likely to involve violence and yet is something that Isserley regards as routine.

Yet, for me, ‘Under The Skin‘ is not a genre read. It doesn’t share the intent of a thriller to produce tension for tension’s sake or of speculative fiction to present a What If? thought experiment. It sets out to do something darker, more serious and more disturbing. The genre trappings are there to disrupt the readers’ everyday expectations and make them look at things with fresh eyes.

A lot of the book is about Isserley’s rage. She has been betrayed, abused and forced into hard choices that have fundamentally and irrevocably changed her into someone she barely recognises. Isserley’s rage isn’t on the surface. She tries to suppress it, to make the most of her situation, to convince herself that she has found the best form of freedom available to her and to lose herself in small moments of peace. None of this abates her rage, and the stress on her increases when the routine that she uses to numb herself is disrupted by the arrival of a member of the elite who Isserley had once thought herself protected by. Isserley’s pain, physical and emotional soak the pages of this book and stay in the reader’s nostrils long after the last page.

What makes this darker is that Isserley is a predator as well as a victim. Being a predator is part of what lets her sleep at night. It’s not that she takes pleasure in it but rather that it gives her a purpose and a sense of being in control. That Isserley’s experiences of abuse and pain do not translate into any form of empathy for the people she preys on felt plausible to me. Isserley and those around her are able to do what they do because they compartmentalise their thinking. They make no links between their own experiences and needs and those of the people that the prey on. This felt very real to me.

With one exception, the story is told from Isserley’s point of view using the close third-person. This was a very effective way of giving the reader intimate access to Isserley’s thoughts and emotions while still keeping her at arm’s length, inviting the reader to analyse and judge rather than immerse and empathise 

The exception to the close third-person applies to the hitchers that Isserley picks up. The reader gets an unfiltered interior monologue from each hitcher as they assess Isserley once they get in the car. I thought these monologues were wonderful. Apart from being large, fit and male, the hitchers had very little in common. Hearing their thoughts, each with its distinctive idiolect, made them real to me in a very short time. It created more intimacy with them, whether they were likeable or not, than I was given with Isserley and helped me to see how little Isserley understood about the men she picked up.

Meat is central to this story. I’ve been a vegetarian for three decades now but if I had been a carnivore there are scenes in this book that would have made me reconsider my food choices.

The book took me to places and thoughts that I hadn’t expected. The ending was a surprise but a satisfying that did nothing to relieve the oppressive bleakness of the story.

If you’re in the mood for something dark and different that does more than entertain, then I recommend this book to you.