Lost Memory of Skin [Kindle Edition]

Russell Banks (Author)

Book Description

The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable results

Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity 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 under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.

Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. 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 recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor’s motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.

When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor’s past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men’s relationship shifts.

Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.

Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.

The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: In Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks plays peek-a-boo with the reader lifting each corner just enough to wonder at what may lie underneath. When we meet the Kid, he is grappling with his public status as a convicted sex offender, living under a Florida causeway with other men whom society finds “both despicable and impossible to remove and thus by most people simply wished out of existence.” Enter the Professor, with his genius IQ and massive physical presence, eager to prove that men like the Kid have been shaped by social forces and are capable of change. The pair seem diametrically opposed yet share a “profound sense of isolation, of difference and solitude…,” held hostage by their secrets in this morally complex and thought-provoking story of illusions and blurry truths in a novel that that hums with electricity from beginning to end. --Seira Wilson

Review

"'The uncompromising moral voice of our time' (Michael Ondaatje) 'If you've never read Russell Banks it's time you acquired the habit' (Elmore Leonard) 'Banks is one of those precious writers like Twain or Salinger who creates a voice so wonderfully real that the experience of reading them is like a conversation with an old friend' (Sunday Times) 'Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks' (New York Times)"

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Product Details

• File Size: 683 KB
• Print Length: 434 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0307401731
• Publisher: Ecco; Reprint edition (September 27, 2011)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005FFW2C4
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,998 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

119 of 124 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Canary in a coal mine September 30, 2011

By Karen Franklin

Format:Hardcover

The Kid is all alone in the world, hiding in the shadows under the freeway, part of an ever-growing mass of exiles electronically shackled to a society that despises and shuns them.

But who are these modern-day lepers? And why are there so many of them? What if sex offending is a symptom of a malfunctioning society, and these men are just the canaries in the coal mine, carrying the burden of society's shame? What if the Internet is the snake in the Garden of Eden, and pornography is the forbidden fruit?

In "Lost Memory of Skin," best-selling novelist Russell Banks explores the deeper ironies of a culture that condemns pedophiles even while turning its children into dehumanized sexual commodities. But on a deeper level, the novel is about the profound loneliness and alienation of the digital age, the inability of people to get beyond false facades to truly trust and connect with each other.

To the Kid, no one is real. They are all two-dimensional characters. The Professor, a sociologist who takes a mysterious interest in him. The other trolls under the bridge, who regard each other with wary suspicion. Even his own inadequate mother, who abandoned him when he was arrested trying to hook up with a 14-year-old girl he met in a chat room after years of solitary Internet stimulation.

In interviews, Banks has said that the idea for the book came in part from the encampment of registered sex offenders living under the Tuttle Causeway near his home in Florida. Serving as a jury foreman in a child molestation trial also piqued his interest.

"The guy was clearly guilty," he told a reporter. "But he was basically a confused, stupid alcoholic, and it was so easy to imagine this poor stumblebum, in a cloud most of the time, in a world that has been eroticized to such a degree, sitting there and he's sexually inadequate with his wife, and he's a loser, he's out of work, he has no sense of any power in the world whatsoever, so this beast in him starts to arise."

Although the novel is at moments a bit preachy, I found the enigmatic Kid growing on me as he gradually awakens from the fog of fantasy to claim his identity as a decent human being, albeit one with very few choices in life.

157 of 167 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond tolerance September 27, 2011

By switterbug TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The main character of Banks' new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as "the Kid," may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail starting a ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage female.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options--the swamplands, the airport area, or the Causeway. He chooses the Causeway and meets other sex offenders, a seriously motley crew, who consciously isolate from each other. He befriends one old man, the Rabbit, but sticks to his tent, his bicycle, and his alligator-size pet iguana, Iggy. Later, he procures a Bible.

These disenfranchised convicts are enough to make readers squirm. Moreover, in the back of the reader's mind is the question of whether authorial intrusion will be employed in an attempt to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with these outcasts. It takes a master storyteller, one who can circumnavigate the ick factor, or, rather, subsume it into a morally complex and irresistible reading experience, to lure the wary, veteran reader.

Banks' artful narrative eases us in slowly and deftly breaks down resistance, piercing the wall of repugnance. It infiltrates bias, reinforced by social bias, and allows you to eclipse antipathy and enter the sphere of the damned. A willing reader ultimately discovers a captivating story, and reaches a crest of understanding for one young man without needing to accept him.

A series of very unfortunate events occur, and the Kid becomes a migrant, shuffling within the legal radius of permitted locales. At about this time, he meets the Professor, who the Kid calls "Haystack," an obese sociologist at the local university, an enigmatic man with a past of shady government work and espionage. He is conducting a study of homelessness and particularly the homeless, convicted sex offender population.

The Professor offers the Kid financial and practical assistance in exchange for a series of taped interviews. He aims to help the Kid gain control and understanding over his life, to empower him to move beyond his depravities. They form a partnership of sorts, but the Kid remains leery of the Professor and his agenda. The Professor's opaque past, his admitted secrets and lies, marks him as an unreliable narrator. Or does it?

Sex offenders are the criminal group most collectivized into one category of "monsters." Banks takes a monster and probes below the surface of reflexive response. There is no attempt to defend the Kid's crime or apologize for it. We see a lot of the events through his eyes, and decide whether he is reliable or not.

The book is divided into five parts. Along the way, Banks dips into rhetorical digressions on sex, geography, and human nature, slowing down the momentum and disengaging the tension. These intervals are formal and stiff, although they are eventually braided into the story at large. However, despite these static flourishes, the story progresses with confidence and strength.

Overall, the languid pace of the novel requires steadfast patience, but commitment to it has a fine payoff. Readers are rewarded with a thrilling denouement and a pensive but provocative ending. It inspires contemplation and dynamic discussion, and makes you think utterly outside the box.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars LOST MEMORY OF SKIN presents perhaps the most challenging work of Banks's career November 2, 2011

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

Russell Banks has long been considered one of the finest writers of literary fiction in America today. His portrait of the American landscape's dark side and the tortured souls who inhabit it have leapt from the small page to the big screen in award-winning films such as Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter. LOST MEMORY OF SKIN presents perhaps the most challenging work of Banks's career. With controversial and dark subject matter that is expertly handled, he creates a novel that will linger in the memory of its readers long after the final page is turned.

The main characters are not as much "people" as they are symbols and metaphors. With the exception of a few tertiary characters, the central figures here have no names. The protagonist, a convicted sex offender, is known simply as the Kid. In his early 20s, his life is already all but over. Convicted of soliciting sex with a minor, he has done his time in prison and is now forced to live under a causeway in Miami that is inhabited by fellow ex-cons and social miscreants. They represent the sad underbelly of society from which most people avert their eyes; they are the invisible minority.

The Kid is unable to get worthwhile employment, he cannot live within 2,500 feet of where children may gather, and he must wear an electronic device on his ankle for a decade, preventing him from wandering beyond the county limits. Whether the Kid was actually guilty of the crime for which he was incarcerated or set up in a string of potential sex offenders becomes almost irrelevant. The Kid, like most people, has made many mistakes in his life that he wishes he could change. His dark and somewhat perverted impulses have dominated his decision-making process and put him into a situation that seems hopeless.

Then, out of the blue, a local college professor approaches the causeway camp of mostly ex-sex offenders and offers them a deal. He is a sociologist of questionable moral character and full of secrets himself --- but to desperate people like the Kid, he is seen as a potential way out of a life that is virtually non-existent. The Professor offers the Kid and his comrades an opportunity to change their lives by controlling their impulses. In return, the Professor will gain valuable research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders.

The Kid and the Professor form a strange bond --- one that is strengthened after the Professor comes to the Kid's financial aid when a police raid all but destroys every possession he had under the causeway. As they begin to build trust, the Professor slowly lets on about his own past --- one that is full of secrets. The Kid is not sure if he can believe the story the Professor has spun about a man who is under surveillance by certain government agencies that wish to silence him. He makes an odd request of the Kid when he asks him not to believe that suicide is the reason behind his death. The Kid reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile, the Kid aligns himself with the Writer --- a journalist looking to uncover the truth behind the Professor's past. It is during this journey into the Professor's life that the Kid will smack first-hand into a parallel narrative that recalls his own past and questionable moral choices --- and he begins to fear that their fates may be destined to have the same ends.

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN is challenging and profane to the point of pornographic. Yet it is so unflinchingly real that you cannot help but turn the pages as Banks digs deeper and deeper into the psyches that shape the shadowed edges of American culture.

Reviewed by Ray Palen

More About the Author

Russell Banks is the author of sixteen works of fiction, many of which depict seismic events in US history, such as the fictionalized journey of John Brown in Cloudsplitter. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes, and two of his novels-The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction-have been made into award-winning films. His forthcoming novel, The Reserve, will be published in early 2008. President of the International Parliament of Writers and former New York State Author, Banks lives in upstate New York.