Skin Folk (Oeb) [Import] [Hardcover]

Nalo Hopkinson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Assorted (December 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0759526648
• ISBN-13: 978-0759526648
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books. If you like knowing about awards and such, my work has received the Warner Aspect First Novel award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian literature of the fantastic, the World Fantasy Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and Honourable Mention in Cuba's Casa de las Americas Prize for literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Fantasies, December 31, 2002

By 

Judith W. Colombo (Deposit, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Skin Folk (Paperback)

Review

By

Judith Woolcock Colombo

Hot and spicy with the rhythm of the Caribbean, Skin Folk is a collection of 15 short stories by Jamaican born Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson. These tales are bonded together by a common theme, change or shedding of skin. All is illusion; nothing is, as it first seems within the pages of this book.

Beginning with the first story Riding The Red, we see the illusion being stripped away by this bizarre twist on the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Here the elderly Red Riding Hood cautions her daughter to watch her granddaughter who has now begun "to ride the red." This is the time when wolfie comes around to capture and seduce. The grandmother admits "the red hood was mine, to catch his eye," but wolfie also had his dance "all hot breath and leaping flank, piercing eyes to see and strong hands to hold." Encountering wolfie is a natural consequence of riding the red or puberty. It is part of coming of age.

In Money Tree, Silky must reluctantly embrace the heritage of her Mamadjo or mermaid mother in order to save her greedy brother Morgan when he seeks to wrest pirate treasure away from River Mumma. In Something To Hitch Meat To, Artho is given the gift of seeing people and things as they really are by a strange spider-like little girl, and in Under Glass, a young girl living in a post apocalyptic world dooms another world with her careless play.

This concept of illusion and magical change continues throughout the book in stories such as Tan-Tan and Dry Bone where a soft hearted girl has pity on death disguised as a starving old man and takes him home only to learn if you pick him up you pick up trouble..

Although some stories were too similar, others were truly extraordinary. Skin Folk is a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it. ...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid Fantasy and SF Tales Graced By Caribbean Rhythms, April 6, 2002

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Skin Folk (Paperback)

Nalo Hopkinson's splendid gifts as a brilliant, often unique, writer of literary fictional prose that is also intriguing fantasy and science fiction are amply shown in this fine collection of short stories. Most of these have been published previously in relatively unknown anthologies in Canada and the United States; two are unpublished, and a third is a chapter from her novel "Midnight Robber". Hopkinson has a splendid ear for dialogue and a marvellous eye for scenery, with a taut, lean prose which effectively captures the Caribbean patois of her childhood. "Skin Folk" is a fascinating look at her artistic growth as a writer; here are stories about demons and ghosts as seen through the eyes of West Indians, along with occasional glimpses of cyberpunk science fiction. One of the most memorable tales is "Greedy Choke Puppy", an incandescent look at Vampire mythology with a uniquely West Indian twist; other compelling tales include "Slow Cold Chick" and "Fisherman" which are intriguing meditations on magic and sex.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Caribbean Thrills and Chills, November 5, 2004

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Skin Folk (Paperback)

Nalo Hopkinson has made waves with some of the most offbeat and creative speculative fiction in recent memory, with her Caribbean roots adding unexpected flavor to tales of future societies and alternate realities. She's also one of the very few black women working in the field, adding a much-needed new voice to the genre. But watch out for the "sci-fi" stereotype that has been applied to Hopkinson, because she has a more well-rounded style that also includes strong elements of fantasy and horror. Those strengths are evident in this collection of short stories, which are often built upon the unique fairy tales and folklore of the Caribbean, but then proceed into all manner of great fictional speculations.

Some of the tales here are rather underdeveloped and move along too quickly, with implausible plot jumps and incomplete conclusions. Examples are "Tan Tan and Dry Bone" which is merely a distilled vignette from one of Hopkinson's later novels; or the potentially terrifying, but rushed and inconclusive, "Greedy Choke Puppy." However the day is saved by winners like "Under Glass," which has a very unique doomsday/dystopia scenario, and great sketches of expatriate Caribbean characters and culture in "Money Tree" and "A Habit of Waste." The apex of the collection is the highly disturbing erotica tale "Ganger (Ball Lightning)," in which a couple learns to overcome malfunctioning and possessed bedroom toys and work out their relationship problems the old-fashioned way. This is in fact one of Hopkinson's best running themes - as technology's got nothing on culture and humanity. [~doomsdayer520~]