Who, or more to the point what, is Isserley? Nimble predator, dilligent employee or vulnerable female?
We meet her cruising the Scottish highways evaluating the potential of each hitchhiker she passes for purposes initally unknown. Once selected they eagerly hop into the passenger seat and are intrigued by this petite, bespectacled youth with slight hands and large breasts wearing kitsch bell bottoms. With the heating turned up to full she appraises their physique as they peel off their layers of outerwear. But what is she assessing them for?
Under The Skin is a compelling novel that stays with you for a long time after you've finished the book. It introduces an alien race that inhabits and harvests our world completely undetected. Their strange objectives and bizarre perspective on human life is at first startling, but as the story develops and as with all great science fiction, a sense a familiarity to our present starts to creep in with each turn of the page.
On one level you could simply take it to be a crusade to convert us literary lovers into ardent vegetarians, but on a much deeper level it is most definitely a thoughtful narrative on the notion that we really are all the same under the skin.
