by E.M. Reapy
Elizabeth Reapy’s Natalie is one of those characters who stays with you long after you’ve finished the book she occupies. If “occupies” is even the right word, given Natalie’s preoccupation with not taking up too much space in the world. Fixated on her body and her tendency to binge at times of stress, she takes the reader on a journey – both literal and metaphorical. As she moves through the world, the book begins to resemble a series of linked
short stories more than a novel, but there’s something very fitting about where the chapter breaks tend to fall. The girl we first meet in Bali is very at odds with herself; but by the time she finishes up in Dublin, she is much more comfortable in her own skin, and well able to stand up for herself and articulate her needs and desires. Along the way she meets a host of interesting characters – some interesting, some off-putting – and learns something about herself in the process. Skin is a book to be savored slowly, all the better to appreciate Reapy’s gift for description and character. She joins a wealth of Irish writers hailing from Mayo – in the same illustrious company as Sally Rooney and Mike McCormack, to name but two.