In
the Skin of a Monster by Kathryn Barker
(Allen & Unwin 2015)
PB RRP $17.99
ISBN: 9781760111717
PB RRP $17.99
ISBN: 9781760111717
Reviewed by Jade Harmer
We meet seventeen-year-old Alice in the
remote outback Australian town of Collector. Three years have passed since her
identical twin sister inexplicably took a gun to school and killed seven fellow
students, and Alice is still trying to make sense of it all and distinguish
herself from the murderer whose face she shares in the eyes of a broken town.
We meet Lux in the guise of a seventeen-year-old
boy in a dangerous, distorted version of Collector, built on surreal
dreamscapes and nightmares riddled with imagined monsters such as the girl in
the brown school dress.
Events quickly takes a fantastical turn
as Alice becomes trapped in Lux’s world, and even there, she finds herself
mistaken for the monster that plagues her.
In
the Skin of a Monster questions perception
and reality in what is an original and intriguing debut novel from Kathryn
Barker which I found to be a challenging read.
Alternating between the perspectives of
Alice and Lux, a story emerges with the potential to confuse a reader in much
the same way that Barker’s characters are confused by their circumstances.
I found myself questioning whether Alice
ever had a twin, or if in fact she was the very monster she feared, living in a
delusional, drug-addled state.
By the novel’s conclusion, some readers
may be frustrated to find that the answers Alice seeks to find are by no means
tied up in a nice, neat bow, but as she attempts to return to her life in the
real Collector, there is a sense that she and her town, real and imagined, can
begin to heal.
This book is suitable for a young adult
and adult readership.
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