Customer Reviews

Skins

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3 star:		(2)
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Poet, short story writer, and former journalist, Adrian Louis presents a harshly comic vision of Indian life in this novel set on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota. He immerses the reader in a compelling mix of Indian and white cultures and the resulting ambiguities, competing worldviews, and conflicted values.

Rudy, the Indian cop, portrays these confusing conflicts beautifully, representing both the law in his tribal police uniform and vigilante justice in his blackface and pantyhose mask. Revealing other dimensions of Rudy's confusion, Louis explores his relationship to the women in his life. Married and estranged from his wife, Rudy indulges his growing attraction to his cousin's wife, Stella, while he carries on with other men's wives as well. Meanwhile, afflicted with hypertension, he takes meds that affect his sexual performance, and much of the novel traces the rising and falling cycles of his libido, all of which are unpredictable and seemingly under the spell of forces beyond him. It is significant that Iktomi, the trickster spirit and shape-shifter, is a central theme in the novel, for appearance and reality, wisdom and stupidity, pride and shame, love and rage are all in a continuing dance for dominance.

Also at the center of the story is Rudy's relationship with his alcoholic older brother, Mogey. While casting an unblinking eye on the devastating impact of alcohol consumption on the reservation, Louis both condemns and forgives those who seek oblivion in the bottom of the bottle. In his hands, Mogey is a wonderful creation. While there are vague allusions to the grim effect of two tours of duty in Vietnam, Louis doesn't excuse Mogey for choosing his path of self-destruction. Yet through his brother Rudy, the reader can begin to understand the deep love possible for someone unable to resist the pull of despair.

This book is not for everyone, as some of the reviews already posted here indicate. However, I recommend it highly for what it has to say about the Indian nations - in their own voices and without the moralizing or sentimentality of those who have never walked in their shoes. Also worth watching is the film "Skins" (2002, available on DVD), which is based on the book.

Adrian Louis is a genius! I could NOT put this book down! I even snuck it into work with me.
It is sad, funny, gut-wretching, sweet---it has it all! If you don't thoroughly enjoy this book--CHECK YOUR PULSE!!!!!

This is a hardcore book of life on the rez. It is so accurate that I can only catorgize Louis's writting as "Brilliant". I highly recommed this book and guarentee that this will leave you craving for more!

Admittedly, I couldn't put the book down and read it in a week. Even thought the novel is a work of fiction, it hits closer to the truth about Rez born and raised Indians than any other novel that "mystifies" Indians in the "butterflies and daisies" sense. Fact of the matter is, Rez life is hard, damn hard. There are many casualties in this novel. First and foremost: the dishonor caused by CENTURIES of abuse and the systematic extermination of Indians have produced a culture of people who love hard, live hard, drink hard, die hard, and hate even harder. And, the central common theme...even to those who refuse to see it is the Indian's hate of the white man. Rudy clearly has little use for most of the everyday characters he comes across. He has disdain for most of his fellow Indian police officers, his Indian boss and his Indian friends. He has no respect for Indian drunks, and loathes how the economically oppressed culture has turned Indian kids into violent drug users and thugs with little respect and no hope. Socrates surmised "all questions lead to God". On the Rez, all ills lead to the white man.

This hate is the saddest legacy that American's have cultivated from the abuses that have, and CONTINUE to be bestowed upon the red man. Most whites in America are not deserved of this hate. I think it is puzzling to many white American's why Indians continue to hate them, even though many white people have never even met an Indian, and are totally unaware of the abuses that continue to happen at the hands of the government, or greedy entrepreneurs.

The last insult of the book that disturbed me the most, was the consciences crafting of hatred and callous death and destruction to the most despised Indians that exist to most western tribes, whites of mixed Cherokee ancestry. Eastern Cherokee have long been the butt of jokes, ridicule and downright hatred because of their light skin, and often-light hair. The cruelest person on the reservation was represented by Wally Trudeau, a mostly white / part Cherokee (of suspect origin, and married to a full blood from the Rez) who uncaringly allowed the death of Mogie's best friend, Weasel Bear, by catching him in a steel animal trap during a blizzard in his back yard.

Wally was unremorseful and un-pitying. And, seemed not to respect tribal authority, nor the life of Indians. Eventually, he was killed in cold blood for some other deserved slight to another Indian. You could almost imagine the collective cheering by full blooded Indians everywhere. Though it is essential to any story to have a foil, I think Mr. Adrian Louis was making another of his now famous, calculated statements. Most Indians on the Rez are drunks. Most men/women on the Rez will cheat on you and leave you one day...All true Indians are deep red skinned with braids and live on a Reservation (even his wife Vivianne, who was Chippawa, had skin too light for Rudy's tastes). All others indians need not apply. This is further bolstered in the fact that when Mogie dies, he goes to heaven, "and there was not a single white face there".

Although this book hit home in all the problems of society, (ie, alcoholism, abuse, etc) there was some good indian humor. Being raised on a "rez" I was able to relate to the story. Some of the characters in the book are on my rez. Recommend it to all.

This book has a sheer raw gripping power that takes hold of you, drags you in and under, into a world that seems absolutely alien to middle-class Whites like myself. It lets you peek over the shoulder and into the mindset of Rudy, a middle-aged tribal cop on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Unfortunately, it does so in a language whose pubertal vulgarity doesn't quite fit a man in his 40s.

While the book has passages that I find hauntingly beautiful (the Deer People, to name just one), it also has a fair share of redundancies, suffers from an overuse of adjectives and - most of all - from a point-of-view that oscillates wildly between third person limited and third person omniscient. I often found myself wondering whose eyes I was looking through, so to speak: Rudy's as an adult? Rudy's as a teenager? Somebody else's? Whose?

Inspite of its shortcomings, I very much enjoyed "Skins". Louis is a talented storyteller. He deserves - needs - a better editor, though!

hey, Alexie is fine, but this guy is the real goods. I've read every contemporary Native author there is, and Mr. Louis has nailed the sugject of "rez" indians like no other. I was overcome with a sense of the desperation and the struggle, moved by the lives of all the major characters, and stunned by the brutal honesty of the book. I can't wait for Mr. Louis' next novel. (and if you're looking for other excellent novels with similar themes, try :"Green Grass, Running Water" and "medicine River" by Thomas King, and, of course James Welch's novels.

Alexie, Harjo and Welch have already explained why this is such an excellent story. I'd like to add a few personal thoughts. The characters are truly memorable. Rudy is part Rhett Butler, Rocky, Thomas Magnum, and Vinnie Vega. Mogie, offers us a face, a history, and an explanation for his thousands of real life counterparts. Several of the female characters acknowledge the often downplayed or even ignored fact, that Indian women are sexual beings.

I found it hard to let Rudy go at the end of the book. As with Rhett, Rocky, and Thomas, I wanted to know what happened to him next. How he made out during the years that followed.

I am a woman and I did not see Rudy as misogynistic at all. I'm sure there are some who would call Rhett, Rocky, etc. the same thing. To some, the glass is ALWAYS half empty.

As of 1-01, the book is expected to be made into a film. I read it a second time when I heard who has been cast. Picturing Eric Schweig as Rudy, Graham Greene as Mogie, and Adam Beach as a younger Rudy in flashbacks, just intensified everything I felt about the characters during the first read. There ARE some "don't miss" parts of the book that will not make the film. I'd highly recommend reading the book while you wait to see the perfectly cast film.

Another one of my very favorite books! The characters are well-crafted & the story itself is off the charts! I have read this book several times & every time I open it, I get excited to reunite with my friends, Rudy, Mogie, Stork, Stella, & the rest of the rez gang. A wonderful, human story of love, anger, sadness, revenge & humor. Thank you Adrian Louis!!!

Skins was everything I was told it would be- entertaining, thought provoking, funny, sad, and an honest look into modern Indian reservation life.