Customer Reviews

Cold Skin

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 of prussic acid." (Chapter 21, Tabooed Things). There is a sacrifice in COLD SKIN as per Frazer's system of world myth, as well as an appearance of the ancient cycle of death, fertility and rebirth. In this novel, however, the cycle is more reminiscent of Nieztsche's idea of the Eternal Rerturn where the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur endlessly and infathomably, in the exact same self-similar form. There are also stylistic and thematic allusions to Poe, to Kafka, to H.P. Lovecraft and others

Altogether, COLD SKIN is a stimulating, provocative and unusual work of a fiction that knits together the devices of the gothic, myth and the fable in a headlong adventure story that Mr. Pinol has cunningly crafted to be both compulsively readable and intellectually stimulating.

The "mysterious island" genre has enormous built-in appeal. The unsuspecting arrival, the gradual revelation that something is not right, the full disclosure of the horror -- it's pre-sold. All we ask from the author is competence. And that's what 'Cold Skin' is -- competent.

Pinol depicts a sub-Antarctic island of an almost lunar austerity, with its abandoned cottage, its sterile forest, and that big phallic symbol of a lighthouse throwing its light on an untraveled stretch of cold sea. The nightly attacks of the amphibious Sitauca are relentless, and Pinol does a pretty good job of capturing the embattled atmosphere -- the sleeplessness, the dwindling ammunition, the boredom, the hell of close quarters. The humans' monotony is relieved only by the presence of a captured amphibian, a squaw used only for housework and sex (best sex he's ever had, the narrator tells us). "Our life in the lighthouse is far-fetched." It certainly is.

Of course, the true struggle is with the roommate, the bloodthirsty Austrian, Gruner; he is the real villian of the story, not the "toads." Sometimes I just wish he were more vivid. He carries a terrible stink about him, we're told late in the book, and I wonder why the author didn't mention this earlier -- Gruner's stench should have permeated every page. Pinol is an anthropologist, not primarily a novelist, and so his book often lacks the texture and sense of immersion we expect from a novel. Many parts feel hurried through, and one misses the doggedness of, say, Stanislaw Lem's somewhat similar `Solaris' (where the mysterious island appears as a mysterious space station). Wouldn't the narrator be haunted by his life back home, by his aborted scientific work, even by those drowned Portuguese sailors in the shipwreck just offshore? And, more importantly, don't these guys ever use the bathroom? Sorry, but it's the attention to such mundane details that keeps an author honest. 'Cold Skin' is a brisk 170 pages, and while its abrupt style works well at times, the book often feels as bare and unexplored as its L-shaped island.

I bought Cold Skin when it made Entertainment Weekly's list of best books of the year. I wasn't expecting much from this short tale but boy, was it hard to put down! Pinol's short horror tale has a lot of terror, a great deal of suspense and an incredible main character that is vivid, interesting and very, very peculiar.

When young man arrives to a cold island in the Antartic circle, he is about to embark on a journey he will not soon forget. He is supposed to spend a year on this island, doing weather-related research. But on his very first night on the island, the man is attacked by strange beasts that look like a cross between fish and man.

After surviving the night, he seeks refuge in the island's light tower, which is already inhabited by Gruner, a bitter man who's quietness and moodiness are as devastating as the beasts that attack the island every night. They will forced into a friendship of survival.

Gruner has a slave living with him, one of the creatures that attack them every night. Only this creature is much different than the others. Night after night, they are attacked by the creatures, warned only by the sound of their captive's singing. And as our hero seeks to study and understand the creatures, Gruner only wants to destroy them, a thirst that will soon mark their doom.

Atmospheric and moody doesn't start to describe the tone of this book. Although the book is short, the story is more fleshed-out and complex than most books you will find on the best-seller walls. The characters are fully believable and show exactly the extent of what a person would do were he trapped on an deserted island and facing unforseen cicumstances.

The book is somewhat dampered by a week and yet unavoidable ending. And yet, even that is not enough to ruin this superb gem of a book.

A young man arrives at an isolated polar island where he will live for the next twelve months in solitude, his job to log the intensity, direction and frequency of the winds. With no one there to meet him, the new weatherman is immediately assailed by his solitude, thinking to make use of this time in the study of great literature. Finding himself utterly alone, save the crusty resident of a nearby lighthouse, the man's thoughts turn to his circumstances, a position for which he has volunteered: "The landscape we see beyond our eyes tends to be a reflection of what we hide within us." By nightfall, the question of the missing former weatherman is resolved; the new man is of an entirely different mindset than what he expected, his contemplative endeavors replaced by a need to survive an attack that arrives with the night.

In this bizarre setting, where nature is but a passive observer, Pinot turns the weatherman's world upside down, the pages of his calendar scribbled over and over until the twelve months of his stay are all but unrecognizable, the days slipping through his fingers in a routine of sleep and violence. His frenzied mind can barely make sense, driven only by a desire to live, his small world peopled by the taciturn Gruner, keeper of the lighthouse-fortress, and a horde of humanoids of unknown origin who attack the lighthouse relentlessly. One small human gesture wipes the confusion from the young man's eyes, a moment of clarity, even hope in an otherworldly existence.

Cold Skin is a provocative study of the cyclical nature of civilization, the evolution of violence and man's aggression in an unpredictable setting. In a most unusual tale of fear bred in isolation, Pinot fashions a moral tale, a man brought into direct conflict with his own motives, his natural instincts and the lengths he will go to in preserving his own life. Daily battle renders him maniacal, then helpless in the face of his decisions, until out of chaos comes revelation, the extremes of the predicament yielding finally to insights that awaken his humanity, if only briefly. Pinot explores the complex inner terrain of personality, man's atavistic memory tempered by occasional bouts of intuition. In a world besieged by its distrust of otherness, Cold Skin is a timely fable, a reminder of self-limitation in the face of the extraordinary. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

When I read a review of Cold Skin : A Novel by Albert Sanchez Pinol I thought right away of Poe's Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. While Cold Skin is a good read, it just starts to lose something after a bit. The tale wallows in its own immorality. It seems the author, Mr. Sanchez Pinol, set out to write a metaphor for what is wrong with the world, but this world is 20th century Europe. And, maybe that is where the problem lies.

This strange tale of monsters and beastiality takes place on a remote island in the Antarctic. The two main characters are a well read weather official and a demented German lighthouse keeper. But, what are they struggling against, the monsters, themselves, or each other? Cold Skin is a tale of abuse, as much as a tale of horror. I wanted to like this book, but just could not. Well written, a good story, but hateful characters. The author sets out to have us identify with the beast within both these men, but to what point? Are we just the sum total of our own situations? This book sets out to answer those questions but leaves us shaking our heads. In the end, I say, read Poe. He had a better handle on our madness.

The book is an excellent metaphor for basic (or base) human behavior. Like "Lord of the Flies" it tells how quickly a person, even a somewhat "modern" man, can, under extreme conditions, throw off their humanity and become what they most fear. It becomes clear too that the men on the island are the interlopers and it is they who eventually become the real beasts. I liked the fact that there was no extra "fluff" in the book - it was short, concise and as spare as the island. I am usually convinced that American writers of horror/sci-fi fiction, such as Steven King, get paid by the word!

If you're a fan of humans-under-siege fiction like I Am Legend, Assault on Precinct 13 and Night of the Living Dead, you're bound to enjoy Pinol's lightning quick read, Cold Skin: A Novel. While there is plenty of philosophizing by the narrator on his--and man's purpose--the novel is never bogged down by its obvious metaphors. Instead, Pinol's story moves briskly and even reads, at times, like Stephen King when Stephen King was still treating us to horror.

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....

I found this book almost impossible to put down once I started reading it. Right from the start, I was struck by the brooding tone of the novel. There are definitely some Lovecraftian elements to the novel (desolate locale, post-WWI time setting, monster elements), with a smattering of Hemingway thrown in for good measure (obscure references to a traumatic past). However, I think that the author explores the psychological elements of human conflict and isolation to a greater extent than Lovecraft ever did. The existential bits come in at the end of the novel, which, though satisfying in an "Aha!" kind of way, left me trying to puzzle out the meaning of it all. Are they in hell? Are they in limbo? What the heck does it all mean?

What I love about this book is on the surface it seems like a monster book but it is really so much more and in the end not even really about the monsters at all. I recomend this book to anyone. My favorite thing about it is that it gets right to it, no messing around!