Reading the Ursula K Le Guin Prize - The Skin and Its Girl
- Publisher – Ballantine Books
- Published – Out now
- Price – £13.99 paperback
One of the things I love about reading fiction prize shortlists is that it exposes me to books I wouldn't otherwise have heard of, or likely wouldn't have picked up if I had. Here's the blurb for The Skin And Its Girl:
In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis' centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.
Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that.
The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us--and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.
This is a novel about stories, and lies, which are both the same thing and not. It's about the ways in which families reinvent their own histories, and through doing so shape the identity of each subsequent generation. It's also about the ways in which your history can often sneak up on you at the most surprising of times, right when you think you've managed to reinvent yourself and leave it all behind.
As with many debut novels this suffers a little from a lack of restraint. There are lots of great ideas in here that on their own could be fantastic but when put together make this feel a little busy. The core story, Betty examining the stories her aunt has told over her life as she considers whether to leave America to be with her lover, is very strong, and it's the stories of Nuha's life that are my favourite parts of the novel. But the fact of Betty's impending decision is largely discarded after the opening chapters - in fact, by the time I reached the end of the book I'd completely forgotten that the reason she's revisiting her aunt's life is in order to aid with this decision. Instead she spends much of her time trying to contend with the complicated history of her Palestinian-American family, touching on ideas of what it means to be removed from your homeland without ever fully getting to grips with that.
Similarly, Betty has blue skin that flakes off when touched. It's later hinted that her younger brother may be partially made of stone, and another character who we hear fragmented stories about had hair made of fire. This vein of magic realism runs throughout the novel but never really had any meaning or purpose, and I spent a lot of time wondering what the payoff was going to be. As it turns out, there isn't one.
Still, despite being a little bloated this was a good read. Cypher writes well and the picture she builds of Nuha and her life is wonderful. It's a very ambitious debut novel and one that I'm glad I read, and I'll almost certainly be keeping an eye out for what Cypher does next.
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