Cold Skin

by Albert Sánchez Piñol

Book Overview

Shortly after World War I, a troubled man accepts a solitary assignment as a weather official on a tiny, remote island on the edge of the Antarctic. When he arrives, the predecessor he is meant to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1841959006
• ISBN13: 9781841959009
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Length: 233 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Whoever fights monsters...

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster". "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you". Friedrich Nietzsche. Really amazing novel, an spiritual son of Joseph Conrad and H. P. Lovecraft. Can a piece of fiction be paradoxically brilliant and dark at the same time? Yes, it can. `Cold Skin' is a brilliantly dark and a darkly brilliant page-turner; simply one of the strangest, most compelling and disturbing works of contemporary fiction. Under the skin of a `horror novel', lies a story that goes beyond genres. A startling fable about inner banishment, a cleverly crafted meditation on solitude as a space for self-discovery and redemption, on the limits of humanity and on our fear of the other. In many ways, `Cold Skin' is the narrative equivalent of Psalm 88 from the Bible: LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in Your presence. / Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry. / For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to the Grave. / I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength. / My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from Your care. / You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss. / Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. / Because of You my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; / my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to You. / Do You work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise You? / Is Your love proclaimed in the grave, Your fidelity in the tomb? / Are Your marvels declared in the darkness, Your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? / But I cry out to You, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before You. / Why do You reject me, LORD? Why hide Your face from me? /I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer Your terrible blows. / Your wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have reduced me to silence. / All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me. / Because of You companions shun me; my only friend is darkness. IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THIS EDITION: THIS IS QUESTION FOR THE TRANSLATOR CHERYL LEAH MORGAN: WHY SOME 15 EARLY PAGES EXPLAINING THE NARRATOR'S BACKGROUND AS AN IRA VOLUNTEER IN THE 1920'S HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT FROM THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION?!! THAT'S AN UNFORGIVEABLE CRIME, A BETRAYAL TO THE ORIGINAL VISION OF THE AUTHOR ALBERT SÁNCHEZ PIÑOL! I WONDER IF HE IS AWARE OF THIS UNEXPLAINED, UNEXPLAINABLE AND UNJUSTIFIED MUTILATION...

Wonderfully Disturbing!

This was one of the best books I've read, I couldn't put it down. Creepy and disturbing, would make a great movie!!

To the Lighthouse

In recounting the plot of this marvelous, disturbing novel to my pre-adolescent niece, my sister-in-law from the other room chimed in, saying: "This sounds like the movie 'The Killer Shrews.'" She came in a few minutes later as I was finishing up the story and told us that "The Killer Shrews," a B-movie from the 50s she'd seen on TV as a young girl, had caused her countless nightmares. Like COLD SKIN, the movie was set on an island at the end of the world, and similarly, the island was overrun by malevolent creatures: shrews made huge by exposure to atomic radiation in the movie, reptilian creatures in this novel. This is one way to read COLD SKIN, as a sci-fi horror story or a fantasy adventure with plenty of action, unexpected reversals, gory battles with perverse outcomes, and male main characters who though dangerously at odds with each other, struggle to make common cause to prevail against alien invaders. This, in fact, is how I told the story to my niece, and it makes for a ripping good yarn. In her words: "This would make a great movie; I can see it all in my mind." But, equally, COLD SKIN can also be read as a psychological thriller, as an investigation of the human species under stress and the altered mental states generated as an attempt to control an unpredictable and ostensibly savage environment. In this reading author Pinol succeeds as well: trapped in incredible circumstances, the unfolding psychodrama between the two "scientists" on the unnamed Antarctic island is credible, acutely rendered and often surprising. Also possible is an ontological reading. There is a crucial moment in COLD SKIN when the narrator comes to question his response to and understanding of the creatures who inhabit the island and the surrounding waters, creatures that seem upon reflection not to be mere beasts but to have qualities that he recognizes in himself, e.g., a sense of play, of wonder, and even an understanding of jealousy. In other words, he sees they are more than reptilian brained. He recognizes their "otherness" is no more "other" than the man, Gruner, with whom he shares the island and their last refuge, the lighthouse. The impossibility of truly knowing and entering into another being's consciousness is a recurring problem for all the protagonists. Further, it can be read as an allegory of the age of exploration when Western conquistadors and settlers armed with Western technologies, conquered and subjugated the worlds they found, classifying the peoples they encountered as savages to justify taking their land and destroying their ways of life. On the literary side, Frazer's "The Golden Bough" is mentioned in two significant scenes. One of the more famous passages this late-nineteenth century examination of myth and fable seems particularly relevant to COLD SKIN: "The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose o

creepy

I could not put this book down, I almost read it in one sitting. This is a book I would just advise the reader to read and find out as little about it as possible to enjoy the full story. But-- if you must know more, A man who desires to be away from soceity gets a job on a remote rock of an island as the weather monitor there. Upon landing on this small barren Island where his only company will be a reclusive German lighthouse keeper in the Antarcrtic, he finds that he is in for something noone would expect. At first you would imagine boughts of depression, lonliness, and solitude. Nope, no chance for that. Here is where you should be satisfied enough to stop and just pick up the book. But if you need more than I can tell you that as soon as night falls on his first day on the Island he finds himself under attack by some type of sea creatures! You should stop now and buy the book, but..... if you need more then you will find tense alliances form after the weather attendant takes a hostage... the hostage allows him to gain entry into the light house which is a better vantage point for the nightly raids by.......Sea PEOPLE! What could be so important abou the hostage!?!?!?! The hostage is a female sea creature that the lighthouse keeper has a sexual realtionship with!!!! Is your mind blown yet? Becouse there's more....

dark Robin Crusoe like thriller

A few years after WWI ended, a ship drops a young man on a tiny uninhabited island inside the Antarctic Circle. The male volunteered to serve as a weatherman for one year because he needed to escape those around him. The locale is so remote no one will ever come by until the ship returns to pick him up and his company insures him no one resides there. However, the man is not where he is expected to be as his company is wrong about the local population. In the lighthouse live depressing hermit Gruner-German, who wants no one on his island including this outsider. When the human-like Sitauca pack attacks the lighthouse with endless fury, the two men form a grudging partnership that looks shaky even before both men hear the siren call of Aneris, the female of the enemy. This is a terrific allegorical suspense thriller that grips the audience from the moment that the unnamed narrator is dumped on the ominous island. Readers will want to know who if any of the men survive. or. The story line is action-packed, but character driven with Gruner and the unnamed weatherman fully developed and their foes especially Aneris so genuine. Fans will want to read this dark Robin Crusoe like thriller. Harriet Klausner