Skin Folk - Nalo Hopkinson
Feb. 23rd, 2009 04:56 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocThis week I read Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson; it's a collection of sort of mythical or magical-fantastic short stories, Caribbean-Canadian with lots of fantastic or ghostly elements from Trinidad and Jamaica. There were a couple that were more science fictiony including the future where body switching is possible but expensive, and the future where the air is saturated with glass dust so it kills you to be outside unprotected. I liked the stories very much, especially the last story with the incredibly creepy sex toy body suits that were also duppys. (Duppies?) It was creepy but not too scary, and really great in how it showed the tensions in a sexual relationship, in the subtleties of how people think about each other & communicate.
The story about Tan-Tan and Dry Bone reminded me a little of Amos Tuotola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts though I haven't read it in a long time.
Also? Fisting story! Butch woman! Non U.S. context for trans characters! That made me happy.
The stories inter-related beautifully at times. The glass in the air story, for example, led into another story where glass was important - which was echoed later in the duppy sex toy story where there was broken glass. Same with eggs, and pregnancy - and of course, skin. All those echoes built up and left a big impression on me by the end of the book.
If I have any criticism it is that occasionally from like, sentence three, I could tell "And here is a story about a child molester" before I had any time to build up investment in the character, or "And in this story the guy is going to be an abusive jerk" when maybe that should not have been obvious! A couple of the stories squicked me out too much - especially the one from the point of view of the child molester. I think actually that people who like horror and dark fantasy and super gothy things would *really* like this book! I don't usually like that, but I enjoyed the book very much. It gave me uneasy dreams, and made my day feel a little more unreal in its normality.
The story about Tan-Tan and Dry Bone reminded me a little of Amos Tuotola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts though I haven't read it in a long time.
Also? Fisting story! Butch woman! Non U.S. context for trans characters! That made me happy.
The stories inter-related beautifully at times. The glass in the air story, for example, led into another story where glass was important - which was echoed later in the duppy sex toy story where there was broken glass. Same with eggs, and pregnancy - and of course, skin. All those echoes built up and left a big impression on me by the end of the book.
If I have any criticism it is that occasionally from like, sentence three, I could tell "And here is a story about a child molester" before I had any time to build up investment in the character, or "And in this story the guy is going to be an abusive jerk" when maybe that should not have been obvious! A couple of the stories squicked me out too much - especially the one from the point of view of the child molester. I think actually that people who like horror and dark fantasy and super gothy things would *really* like this book! I don't usually like that, but I enjoyed the book very much. It gave me uneasy dreams, and made my day feel a little more unreal in its normality.
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