Review 308: Lost Memory of Skin

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finished this book two weeks ago, but wanted to leave some thoughts on the book, as it still hasn’t left me and likely won’t for a long while.

Parts of this book may not be an easy to read, fair warning. We have, an unnamed character who goes by the Kid, a fitting nomenclature. He’s young, early 20’s but looks even younger and despite his age also seems to know very little about the world. He was stunted, some said he was slow to learn, didn’t have the right circumstances growing up. A single parent, left alone too much, and he found porn early and way too often. Once out of school he signs up for the military but was discharged, due to a misunderstanding. Then he quickly found himself in a situation he should have known better, a mistake is what he calls it, and now he is a convicted sex offender.

The Kid is homeless, living under a bridge, a causeway along with other sex offenders, as there aren’t many places to live that is far enough away from where children may congregate. The police and politicians want to look like they are doing something, randomly clear out the place, arrest those who don’t leave. The kid considers jail as an option, where else can he go?

The story of Kid’s conviction takes a long while to be explained. This eventually is drawn out by a man who is known as The Professor, is an extremely large man, a genius that wants to interview the Kid for research on homelessness and sex offenders. The Kid doesn’t understand but goes along with it. They become friends of a sort, perhaps because the Kid has never had a friend before. He was a loner growing up. The Professor’s story becomes a large part of this novel as well.

These two are juxtaposed, one that seemingly had a perfect life growing up, except for his large size, and the other with a single mom who practically ignored him. These two are nearly opposites, one with everything and the other with nothing.

The ending of the book is amazing. There is so much more to say about this book, such as how it reflects on society as there are people in situations where we consider them as throwaway people, without delving into more of their story, we look at them as monsters. How did these people get to that point? There are rough spots in the book, taken overall this book is one of the better ones, making the journey very worthwhile.