murky mercy

first gatherings of thought on Michel Faber's Under the Skin

um. i kinda like meat.
More so than other food. In fact, if I weren't worried about the direct relationship between cellulite and beef (which is something relayed to me by my mother, not that I've read this in any medical journal or whatnot), I'd probably eat steak everyday. I'd be a meatatarian, haha. :P The gruesome processing of the monthling vodsel didn't affect me in the least. Does this make me uncaring? I hope not. Perhaps Hollywood gore has turned me (along with many others I'd bet) rather insensitive to bloody scenes. The passage about Hilis tempting Isserley with the premium steaks initially prepared for Amlis Vess got me salivating and daydreaming about the Australian beefcuts nestled within the family freezer. Seriously. People may be rather disgusted by my cannibalistic reaction to the whole issue regarding Isserley taking a vodsel morsel (ooh la this rhymes doesn't it), but perhaps at that point in time of reading I was in complete sympathy with the hungry Isserley. Not just because of the fact I'd skipped lunch, but because of Faber's descriptive portrayals of Isserley's mannerisms and emotional thoughts. You come to think of her as one of US.

And indeed, why not?

After years of interacting with vodsels, I'm sure we must've affected her, penetrated to her subconscious, altered her ways of living. Blurred the lines of being. (She tried to see herself as a vodsel might, didn't she?) The book doesn't fully explain why in the beginning Isserley didn't bring back female vodsels, we are left to figure out why. But it is pretty obvious - had Isserley brought back females, it would've been too close for comfort, too jarring against her current physical reality. The book would've been severely different if the protagonist were male. Females (pardon me if I'm wrong here but all stereotypes have a grain of truth in them) are generally more sensitive, they find it easier to communicate with others, they are more willing to sacrifice comforts for the sake of others and they trust more easily. Feelings and emotions have more impact here because of Isserley's unique predicament, despite herself trying to be a cold callous professional ("yanked this contemptible little shoot of sentimentality out by its root"), she reacts upon her emotions, more and more so as the story progresses toward its explosive (literally) finish.

Isserley IS the only character within the book that's trapped within the nowheresville space betwixt species, a horrific limbo with no light at the end of the tunnel (which ironically she sees as she submerges herself in the bathtub). No other character in the book can completely identify with her physical sacrifice to surgical mutilation, her sufferings of social ostracism, her inability to express herself sexually and to give in to sexual pleasures, her confusion of dealing/empathising with sentient animals (us homosapiens), her huntress' guilt, her desire for brutal revenge after her rape and her complete and total enjoyment of Nature. There are probably so many more issues plaguing her character, but this a rough summary of the whole. Isn't it a bit much for an individual to deal with? I can understand why, in the end, she wanted to disintegrate, to release her spirit through a transcendental evanescent evaporation. Tears wouldn't do justification to her pain ('the jagged traps of her grief', how beautifully expressed!), she would have to become the moisture that falls from the clouds that we take so much for granted.

Nature.
We discussed a poem in my first 19th Century lit tutorial the other day that reminded me of Isserley's appreciation of the miraculous world around us, as opposed to how much we don't notice it.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

- William Wordsworth, 1806. (emphasis mine)

Isserley's world - noxious/toxic/smog. As opposed to ours. Golden/beauty/purity. Well, the less industrialised parts, anyway. I've never thought of the clouds as being another sea floating above us for one thing.

You know how everyone who read the book first tried to envision Isserley? When things began to confuse us and we realised she was of a different sort? Well, my first thought was that she was a mermaid. I don't know why, perhaps it was her eyes. And the side profile on the cover. Kind of reminds you of that National Geographic Afghan girl.

And then you have to cope with the fact that she keeps thinking herself deformed, while to us she possesses one of the feminine bodily parts that get much (too much, in my opinion) attention from the media, big breasts. It's true, isn't it, the hype really DOES exist. In any case. What Isserley and her kind think the epitome of beauty is, is opposite for us. She cannot eat what we eat. Her sleep cycles are different from ours, the alien language (Faber's neologisms like vodsel, mussanta and aviir - how fun!), the concept of mercy not existing for her race. Everything is jarring within the book, my perceptions keep altering as more and more clues are revealed along the way. Instead of feeling disturbed and having my notions of the world usurped though, I feel intrigued by these new ways of thinking. I definitely have to reread this over again and then talk more about it later. Forgive me for my tangled thoughts, it's the best I can do for now.

We can NEVER read this book for the first time ever again, have you thought about that? Damn.