Customer Reviews

Skin Lane

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Having enjoyed the author's "Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall", I read "Skin Lane" and enjoyed it as well, even though the settings and premises are very different. Neil Bartlett can bring all sorts of situations to life.

"Skin Lane"'s protagonist is Mr. Freeman, known around the shop as Mr. F., who was born around 1920, joined the M. Scheiner Ltd. fur manufacturing firm in the City of London on Skin Lane as a sweeper and rose to be the Head Cutter by 1967, the date of the events of the story. Mr. F. takes furry animal skins, chops them up to remove most traces of the individual animals and to allow others to reassemble the pieces into a fur garment that the wearer enlivens. Mr. F. lives alone in a London apartment south of the Thames.

Mr. F.'s life was like a vinyl record. There were five identical tracks for Monday through Friday, followed by two tracks for Saturday and Sunday with broken grooves allowing some slight variations. Play the record one week and then play the same record the next. He became absolutely identified with his profession, and I mean absolutely.

Mr. F. starts having a repeating dream about finding a nude youth hanging upside down, bound by his ankles, in Mr. F.'s home bathroom. In his dream, Mr. F. starts out by screaming, waking Mr. F. After months of repetition, Mr. F. brings himself to interact slightly with the body, without ever making out the body's face. In waking life, Mr. F. finds himself obsessing over the dream.

Long after the dreams start, Maurice Scheiner, the owner of the firm, announces that his sixteen-year old nephew, Ralph Scheiner, will work at the firm as a sweeper in the sewing machine area. After a brief stay there, Ralph is assigned to Mr. F. to learn about cutting the furs for later stitching. The suspicion around the shop is that Ralph will rotate around the various departments and eventually run the firm.

Even though Ralph is compliant with the procedures of the cutting department, Mr. F. regards him as a nuisance. Ralph does learn a reasonable amount and does work hard. Unlike Mr. F., Ralph has a sense of personal growth and advancement over time and a sense of the possibilities of relationships.

Then, after months of working together, Mr. F. connects a skin tone, body type, and gesture of Ralph's with the corpse of the dream. When Mr. F. shifts gears and goes out of his way to avoid Ralph, the dream relationship gets more animated, and Mr. F. starts keeping a furtive eye on Ralph from afar.

When Ralph gets into a situation that brings him closer to Mr. F., the story moves to a climax and follow-up where the extent of Mr. F.'s obsession is revealed.

The author does a fine job of bringing his characters to life. Ralph and the other workers at the furrier are quite vivid. There is a fun interlude involving the making of a fur coat for someone's mistress. Mr. F. tries not to be vivid or fun, but the author keeps Mr. F. having to react to changes of routine.

The omniscient narrator comes up with a misleading one paragraph summary of Mr. F.'s plight: "Mr. F., you see, is realizing that he has never lived in the present tense before." (Page 274 of the paperback) Mr. F. could comfortably say, "I go to work every weekday", "This is how one cuts fur", and "This is how we interact." These statements are all in the present tense. What Mr. F. has trouble saying is, "I am going to work today", "I am working on my methods", "I am feeling". Mr. F.'s vinyl record is destined never to change, grow, improve, or feel. It is always and only in the timeless present. If there is too much pressure on a record, it breaks. Then one could go out and get a new one.

Mr. F. is a sad, limited man put under pressures he can't understand. "Skin Lane" is a good book to read.

When I finished this novel, I thought of Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged from the military in 1975, after having served in Vietnam and being honored with a Purple Heart, because he came out to his superiors. I remember his saying in TIME magazine, where he made the cover of and which I still own, that he reached adulthood without ever having touched another human being in a moment of either love or passion. That is precisely the plight of Mr. F., the central character of Neil Bartlett's newest novel, someone that I grew weary of at times but who haunts me since I finished the book. Mr. F., a little like a Kafka character and who must have been the cousin at least of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby since he is all about loneliness, is 46 when we meet him in London in 1967, has been a Head Cutter at the same furrier business for 33 years, has the same routine both at home and work that he seldom deviates from, wears the same brown suit to work every day and takes the same route, stopping to buy the morning paper on the way, and, in the words of the narrator who speaks often to the reader, has a body "well preserved, but largely unused."

Mr. F-- that stands for Freeman-- sees his world turned topsyturvy when the owner of the company's sixteen-year-old nephew Ralph Scheiner, swaggers into his work area to learn the furrier trade from this master instructor. Mr. F's dilemma is that Ralph whom the women in the building have nicknamed "Beauty" is, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, handsomer than a body has a right to and well aware of it. Ralph also is the spitting image of the naked man who has been haunting Mr. F in his recurring nightmares. The cat-and-mouse game played between Mr. F and Beauty provides the tension in this little novel as Mr. F instructs the boy in the delicate precision of slicing animal pelts to make expensive furs for miladies and sometimes tart-types.

What keeps this novel from being better-- and there are a lot of things to like about it-- is that the author cannot decide if SKIN LANE will be a taut psychological thriller or a novel about a sad, lonely but sympathetic man who in mid-life looks into the mirror and sees a "old, ugly and confused" man who has neither loved or been loved. It seems to me that Mr. Bartlett cannot have it both ways. Mr. F is no Tom Ripley, a character whom I love reading about but would certainly never sympathize with, so the writers for the jacket blurb are wrong when they compare Bartlett's fiction to that of Patricia Highsmith.

Enough sour-graping. Mr. Bartlett can wax most lyrical, particularly in his descriptions of London at night; and you have to like a man who makes a verb out of "cuff-link." And he will tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know about the furrier business. Mr. Barlett also wrote READY TO CATCH HIM SHOULD HE FALL, a very fine novel indeed, although this one is certainly worth your time and effort. The climax will take your breath; the ending will break your heart. Unfortunately the world is full of far too many Mr. F's who watch the world go by from their windows.

In London forty-six year old Mr. F is a creature of habit. He has worked at the same place for over three decades never changing his work day routine or for that matter the cut and color of his suit since he bought his first one for the funeral of King George VI. Mr. F. is a private person never altering his routine for instance how he comes and goes from work at Scheiner's or when he arrives or departs never changes and has not since he joined the firm in 1934.

In January 1967, Mr. F. begins to dream of a handsome naked young male corpse. His fantasy disturbs Mr. F., but he is not sure why except he does not like change even when he sleeps. The dream repeats itself several nights in a row. An even more radical change occurs when the boss assigns Mr. F to mentor his sixteen year old nephew Ralph who has not the time or patience for old fogies like his father, uncle or Mr. F. To his shock and obsessive need, Mr. F believes Ralph is the star of his sordid nightmares.

SKIN LANE (aptly named for the fur trade as well as for Mr. F's first time desires for someone else) is a deep slowly simmering psychological suspense thriller. Mr. F. obviously dominates the tale as the audience follows him for a few months while also learning of his past. The support cast enhances understanding of Mr. F., the business and the obsession. Fans will appreciate Neil Bartlett's character driven tale of a middle age loner fixating on his apprentice.

Harriet Klausner

Another coming-out story? Well, of seismic intensity. When the immovable object of granite-thick repression of sexuality is met with the irresistible force of erotic eruption. But alas less a successful birth than volcanic. Blows the top and sides off the Mt. St. Helens of the person and leaves blackened shamble only...

In non-supportive 1967 London, a 47-YO skin-cutter in the declining fur trade, has hideous dreams of a young man tied up in his bathroom, then must work closely with his boss' 16-YO nephew who is indeed "something nice on toast" and then some.

Better critics than I can decide whether the volcanic result is overdone, melodramatic--or all too possible. Perhaps both!

Coming-out stories vary in their intensity, difficulty, pace, result. The Fall of Valor (Charles Jackson) had a married professor done in via an andiron by a hunky Marine. Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin) had David, an American in Paris, fall for an Italian bartender, lose him, and wander down alleyways after boys. Recently, War with the Animals (Paul Russell) depicts a local aw-shucks village boy realizing his sexuality--but artfully gradually, step-by-step. As is the case in Skin Lane.

Late coming out can happen. My own partner was blissfully sex-unaware of anybody until bursting out at age 65 on the sofa of his former student's apartment when Tom came out to his former teacher. Good news there though--after much adjustment, he and I met and it was perfect right up to terminal malignancy. Not so in Skin Lane, but such can be life (so to speak) for a repressed personality in a repressive environment. Buried life, thus.

My favorite is Bartlett's second book, the House on Brooke Street. Same important dynamics of repression-expression, but in an even richer social tapestry. Recommended to read first.

An story of a humble man unable to express or understand his own emotions or his sexual attraction towards other men.
Gripping and thrilling but in a gentle understated way.
Excellent.