In My Skin: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Kate Holden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2007

Called "Quite simply in a class of its own . . . the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material" (Guardian), this is the frank, harrowing, and true story of one young woman's descent into heroin addiction and prostitution and the long, arduous struggle to redeem her life that made her stronger. A shy, bookish college graduate from a solid middle-class home, Kate Holden was uncertain of her way in life. When she decided to try her first hit of heroin as a one-time adventure with friends, she did not anticipate that the drug would take over. She lost her job and apartment and stole from her family. Desperation drove her first to offer her body on the streets and then in high-class brothels, where she discovered hidden strengths as well as parts of herself that frightened her. With the acceptance and unyielding love of a family that never abandoned her, Kate Holden ultimately defeated the drug and left her netherworld behind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What happens when a bright, well-loved young woman gets hooked on heroin and turns to prostitution to keep up her habit? Hopefully, she eventually shakes free, as Australian Holden does, but most likely a lot goes wrong first. In this vivid and riveting account of her own sudden fall and slow recovery, Holden describes the slow pull toward heroin as her friends and her lover are hooked. Mild, almost bored temptation turns into obsession after she gives it a try. As the drug and the life compromises it encourages take over Holden's universe, she loses her job and rarely sees her family and clean friends. Eventually, desperate for cash for the daily fixes for herself and her inept boyfriend, she starts turning tricks on the street. When, one night, a john turns out to be a scout for temps at a brothel, Holden's story turns. The relative stability of the brothel, and the accompanying relationships with sister prostitutes and even some johns, revives Holden's sense of self and self-worth. Throughout, she tells it like it is. Her depictions of the dark realities she lived through are at times graphic, especially in some of the more difficult scenes with johns, but always clear-eyed. She lets the readers see—and judge—the situation for themselves. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In this breathtakingly candid memoir, Holden, a middle-class Australian with an honors degree in classics, recounts her years weathering the emotional storm of heroin addiction. She retraces her fall, from her first hit of the drug (done as a lark with some friends) to months spent so strung out that she stole from her family and the bookstore where she had worked for several years. Heroin, she writes, was "a scaly green lizard wrapped tight around my mind, blinking its cold eyes at me, blinding me." Ever-desperate to finance her next fix, Holden turned tricks on the streets of St. Kilda, Australia, then spent time in a series of high-class brothels, an experience she found alternately harrowing and empowering. Heroin, she says, alters the body and psyche from the moment it bubbles through one's veins. After her first session as a prostitute, she writes: "The thought that I had perhaps just done something momentous slipped off me as smoothly as the needle glided in." What is most unnerving about Holden's account is the way in which she and fellow addicts relapsed after long stretches of being clean. Holden lavishly praises her family, who remained supportive through the most trying of times. Achingly honest but not for the squeamish. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (January 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559708301
• ISBN-13: 978-1559708302
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,236,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written, sometimes disturbing, June 14, 2007

By 

J. L. Keats (CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In My Skin: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is not the best memoir I have ever read. It is also not the worst. I find the comment that this book was "self-indulgent" to be amusing, as I would never expect a memoir to be anything but. That's kind of the point. However, that said, Kate Holden is a talented writer, there is no question. She broke many of the beliefs I previously held about heroin addiction, but I was surprised by how superficially her addiction was portrayed in the book - it seemed only to affect how much money she had, and her relationship with the family. This book is not about a struggle with addiction. If you're looking for that, try reading "Dry" by Augusten Burroughs.

I found this book to be much more about discovering yourself, your talents, your shortcomings, etc. The sex and drugs are really just the shock factors that pull you into what could have been a very boring tale of self-discovery. This book makes for a good read overall, can be tough to stomach at times, and may frustrate you with the sense that you are only skimming the surface of events and relationships. If you're looking for a truly detailed, involved memoir of struggle and overcoming, I suggest "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls. If you enjoy the memoir genre as a whole, then I recommend this book for the purpose of diversifying your experience with this class of writing.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside a junkie's life, August 3, 2008

By 

Mark Wuschke "Noumea" (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In My Skin: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I knew nothing about heroin addition before reading this book. Why on earth would anyone try it? Why don't the junkies just stop? Who cares about them anyway?

In a clear, well written story Holden answers these questions and more. She goes from a bored uni-student from a happy home, to hanging out with "the wrong crowd", and sinks slowly, inevitably into heroin addiction. Her days become obssessed with a single goal - "Do I have enough money for a fix?" Most heartbreaking of all is her repeated abandonment of her family, whose agony she sometimes mentions, but is never important enough to make her stop. Eventually, penniless, she turns to prostitution. The contrast between the dangerous, dirty world of streetwalking compared to the safe clean environment of a legal brothel is striking.

As a Melbourne resident it felt chilling to think that I walked the same streets of St. Kilda as Holden did. I occasionaly glimpsed street walkers with amusement, but knew nothing of who they were, or why there were there. This book taught me a lot.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anything *but* boring!!, January 12, 2007

By 

S. Tong - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In My Skin: A Memoir (Hardcover)

"In My Skin" is anything but boring.

You would be denying yourself an amazing reading experience if you approach "In My Skin" as just a former heroin addict's confession.

Kate Holden (an arts and creative writing graduate) is an excellent writer and deserves to be recognized and appreciated for her writing, not just for her and her family's struggle in overcoming her addiction.

Although her prose in the book glows with a delicate grace and nostalgic tenderness, it never whitewashes the harsh reality of heroin addiction.

Her descriptions of people and events are always succinct, there is no superfluous or wasted word. A character springs to life on the pages with just a few lines of concise physical description, action or dialogue. Her narrative grabs the readers and propels them headlong into her journey. I had to remind myself to slow down to savor her writing whenever I caught myself reading too fast.

Holden says in an interview that she feels strongly about the negative ways prostitutes and their clients are portrayed in the media and wishes to depict a more realistic picture to show these people are not necessarily bad or monstrous.

The part of her memoir describing her experience working in brothels and on the streets does exactly that. The prostitutes are shown as mostly decent women trying to earn honest money honorably while putting up with a lot of crap and the clients are not always misogynistic sleazballs.

I enjoy reading a non-judgmental account of the sex industry. The stories are sometimes brutal, often amusing, but always touching. I really wish Kate had told us more stories from her, I am sure, large collection.

You can read "In My Skin" for just the ultimately uplifting "story", and you would still enjoy it immensely, but if you don't pay attention to her prose, you would also be missing out on fully appreciating a virtuosic performance from a major new writer.