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Lost Memory of Skin

Russell Banks

3.59 · Rating details · 6,354 ratings · 916 reviews

Uncompromising and complex, Lost Memory of Skin is the story of The Kid, a young sex offender recently released from prison and forced to live beneath a South Florida causeway. When The Professor, a man of enormous intellect and appetite, takes The Kid under his wing, his own startling past will cause upheavals in both of their worlds. At once lyrical, witty, and disturbin ...more

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Hardcover, 417 pages

Published September 27th 2011

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Apr 30, 2011 Will Byrnes rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In 1952 Ralph Ellison's seminal novel, Invisible Man, was published. No, not the one that was made into a film with Claude Raines. Ellison's Invisible Man was about how the black man in America was invisible to the wider culture. His towering novel looked at a very troubling aspect of mid-20th century America. Russell Banks has cast a bright light on a segment of our society that 21st Century America not only wants to remain invisible, but which it is actively trying to erase.

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Jan 07, 2013 Nancy rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Nancy by: Will Byrnes

Shelves: fiction, library-books, shelf-inflicted, award-winners, homelessness, criminal-justice

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

Before reading this book, I never bothered looking at the National Sex Offender Registry. Maybe it’s because I don’t have children, or I don’t care to know that much about my neighbors, or I have my doubts that all the people listed are truly dangerous. Now that I’ve finished the book, I decided to go have a look. First, I found all 8 sex offenders in my area. After studying their faces closely, noting where they lived and how old they were, I looked at sexual offenders Posted at Shelf Inflicted

Before reading this book, I never bothered looking at the National Sex Offender Registry. Maybe it’s because I don’t have children, or I don’t care to know that much about my neighbors, or I have my doubts that all the people listed are truly dangerous. Now that I’ve finished the book, I decided to go have a look. First, I found all 8 sex offenders in my area. After studying their faces closely, noting where they lived and how old they were, I looked at sexual offenders in other neighborhoods I’ve lived in and some from random locations. There were even a few women on the list. What in the world did these people actually do to get themselves in such a horrible predicament?

There are lots of very bad people out there who should be behind bars for a long time. But most criminals – murderers, drug dealers, wife-beaters, gangsters, arsonists, burglars – regardless of the crime, serve a portion of or their entire sentence and are then free to live their lives, trying to blend into society, often without their neighbors knowing a thing about their past. Sexual offenders, after serving their time, must continue to endure public humiliation, making it very difficult to find a decent job or a place to live. There are vicious sexual predators and psychopaths out there, and the need to protect a person’s privacy must be weighed against the need for public safety. But not all sexual offenders are a danger to society. The young man who sleeps with a precocious girl who lied about her age, the guy who leaves the pub and gets caught urinating in a public park, the guy who takes upskirt photos with his cell phone, the teenager who sleeps with a younger teen. The peeping tom. And let’s not forget those who were falsely accused. Some of these crimes are creepy, others are just the result of poor judgment. Should these minor offenders be treated the same way as violent criminals who are likely to commit crimes again? Therein lies my problem with the National Sex Offender Registry. The definition of sexual offender is way too broad and lots of innocent people are suffering unnecessarily because of dumb mistakes. While we are busy protecting our children from people who may not pose a danger to them at all, we are not knowledgeable of the possible danger from the neighbor who was arrested for dealing drugs or the alcoholic who habitually drives drunk.

It was very easy for me to feel sorry for the Kid. His father left while his mom was pregnant with him. His mom, busy with her boyfriends, mostly left the Kid to his own devices, even ignoring his developing addiction to porn. He’s always been a loner, never had a girlfriend or any close friends for that matter, other than his pet iguana, Iggy. He joined the army, and then got discharged while he was in basic training for distributing porn films to his buddies. He’s tired of porn and wants someone real. He chats up a girl on the internet and they make plans to meet. Now, the Kid is living under a highway with other convicted sex offenders. He’s done his time, but his identity is public and his activities are monitored. In Florida, he is restricted from living 2,500 feet from where children are. So that doesn’t leave him many options.

Enter the Professor, a grossly overweight sociologist, and a man with his own secrets. He wants to interview the Kid for his research on homeless sex offenders. They form a tentative bond and gradually learn more about each other. The Kid remains reclusive, distrustful of others, with no plans for a future. The Professor shows him another way to live, while providing the basics he needs for his existence. He does, however, care very much for the animals he is now responsible for, an older dog and a parrot with damaged wings. For the first time in his life, the Kid begins to think better about himself and sees there are possibilities.

I’m in awe of Banks’ ability as a writer to make me feel for such undesirable characters, some who have no doubt committed horrible crimes, others just guilty of making bad choices. I spent some time studying sex offenders in my sociology and criminal justice classes and once the classes were over, the subject got forgotten. This book highlights a problem that should be addressed in a more humane way, without sacrificing public safety and at the same time allowing the offender to have an opportunity for rehabilitation and a chance to live a normal life. It is thought-provoking, no matter how you feel about the rights of sex offenders. For many reasons, this is a difficult subject to explore, and I felt Russell Banks pulled it off admirably. I look forward to reading more of his work.
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Jul 27, 2012 Kurt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love sex offenders.

Here's the thing. I've been a public defender for six years, and I've worked for hundreds of people, with a wide variety of criminal charges, and my favorite clients - bar none - are sex offenders. See, I work in the district court system, handling less serious criminal cases, so I don't generally get clients charged with the sex offenses themselves, but I have worked for many convicted sex offenders charged with Failure to Register. My clients are people who have done some I love sex offenders.

Here's the thing. I've been a public defender for six years, and I've worked for hundreds of people, with a wide variety of criminal charges, and my favorite clients - bar none - are sex offenders. See, I work in the district court system, handling less serious criminal cases, so I don't generally get clients charged with the sex offenses themselves, but I have worked for many convicted sex offenders charged with Failure to Register. My clients are people who have done some terrible thing, served an amount of prison time that a judge deemed appropriate, and now have to try to go about daily life with impossible burdens. They have a dark secret, and if anyone finds out, they can be beaten, their belongings can be vandalized, they can be denied jobs or housing - all because of the chance that they may reoffend. Yes, technically, it's illegal to knock a sex offender's teeth out, but what witness is really going to come forward for a child molester?

Basically, they have something to hide, and there is no one in the world who (1) knows them, Secret and all, and (2) loves them. Basically, they are the human condition. We're all in the same boat, it's just that the rest of us don't have laws that make it public.

I love sex offenders.

That's what this brutal and hopeful and painful book is about. Banks creates a compelling protagonist in The Kid, a registered sex offender who is ashamed to use his real name because that's how people could find him on a registry. The Kid lives in a fictional setting that seems designed to be in Florida somewhere, in a town that has only two places where sex offenders can legally reside: a tent city under a highway bridge, or on a houseboat floating in a swamp (if you can't be within a certain distance of a school or a park, and there are enough schools and parks with overlapping exclusion zones, it doesn't take much to make a whole city off-limits for you). The Kid faces his daily challenges and struggles (getting/keeping a job, making friends, charging his tracking device, keeping in touch with his parole officer) in ways that are depressing but not melodramatic, and he spends a lot of time reflecting on his life and how he ended up where he is. As a public defender, I was struck by the realistic inconsistencies in his assessment of his original sex offense (sometimes he recognizes that it was a bad thing, sometimes he only sees that society is supposed to call it a bad thing even though it wasn't a big deal) and by the realistic way that people treat him when they learn his Secret - there are plenty of people who are willing to give sex offenders a chance, but it's hard to trust a benevolent stranger when the stakes are so high. Banks does a masterful job refusing to push one viewpoint over another - after reading, I don't know how bad Banks judges his character's original crime to be, or what the appropriate punishment is. What is clear, though, is that Banks insists that the reader see his sex offender protagonist as a human being, which is a revolutionary position that doesn't appear in many political debates.

The book has a plot, in that a mysterious figure named The Professor takes a scholarly interest in The Kid, and that relationship progresses in unsettling ways. There is also a sort of epistemological quandary at one point (how do we know what we know?), but it gets resolved in a disappointing fashion (it's like Life of Pi, but with a forced answer instead of an intriguing question to explore). No, the real draw for this book is the rich character study of The Kid.

This is a book to read as an encouragement if you're someone who works to make sex offenders' lives better. This is a book to read as a safe first step if you'd like to see if your humanity is big enough to embrace the people who have done the most terrible things imaginable and want to be seen, still, as human. This is a book to read in election years, when no politician has ever lost a vote being harder on sex offenders (who, as convicted felons, often can't vote), and you need to put a real face on a hypothetical sex offender when you evaluate the fairness of a proposed change in the law. You may well finish the book and still think something like, "Look, the harms of a child falling victim to a sex crime of any kind are so great that they completely outweigh whatever challenges society has to place on potential offenders to prevent the harms," and hey, you may be right. But I encourage you to read this book anyway so that at least you're crafting the most informed positions possible.

I love sex offenders. And if you read this book, you may learn to love them too. ...more

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Jul 08, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it it was amazing

The main character of Banks’ new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as “the Kid,” may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail and on ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage girl. Ironically, he is still a virgin.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options—the The main character of Banks’ new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as “the Kid,” may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail and on ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage girl. Ironically, he is still a virgin.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options—the swamplands, the airport area, or the Causeway. He chooses the Causeway and meets other sex offenders, a seriously motley crew, who consciously isolate from each other. He befriends one old man, the Rabbit, but sticks to his tent, his bicycle, and his alligator-size pet iguana, Iggy. Later, he procures a Bible.

These disenfranchised convicts are enough to make readers squirm. Moreover, in the back of the reader’s mind is the question of whether authorial intrusion will be employed in an attempt to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with these outcasts. It takes a master storyteller, one who can circumnavigate the ick factor, or, rather, subsume it into a morally complex and irresistible reading experience, to lure the wary, veteran reader.

Banks’ artful narrative eases us in slowly and deftly breaks down resistance, piercing the wall of repugnance. It infiltrates bias, reinforced by social bias, and allows you to eclipse antipathy and enter the sphere of the damned. A willing reader ultimately discovers a captivating story, and reaches a crest of understanding for one young man without needing to accept him.

An illegal police raid on the Causeway, provoked by hatred and politics, disrupts the Kid’s relatively peaceful life early on, and now he has nowhere to turn. Subsequently, a hurricane wipes out the makeshift homes of the inhabitants. The kid becomes a migrant, shuffling within the legal radius of permitted locales. At about this time, he meets the Professor, who the Kid calls “Haystack,” an obese sociologist at the local university who is the size and intellect of a mountain, an enigmatic man with a past of shady government work and espionage. He is conducting a study of homelessness and particularly the homeless, convicted sex offender population.

The Professor offers the Kid financial and practical assistance in exchange for a series of taped interviews. He aims to help the Kid gain control and understanding over his life, to empower him to move beyond his pedophilia. They form a partnership of sorts, but the Kid remains leery of the Professor and his agenda. The Professor’s opaque past, his admitted secrets and lies, marks him as an unreliable narrator. Or does it? Later, perilous developments radically alter their relationship, a fitting move on the author’s part that provides sharp contrasts and deeper characterization.

Sex offenders are the criminal group most collectivized into one category of “monsters.” Banks takes a monster and probes below the surface of reflexive response. There is no attempt to defend the Kid’s crime or apologize for it. We see a lot of the events through his eyes, and decide whether he is reliable or not.

He acquires an undernourished, skulking yellow dog and a crusty old grey parrot with clipped wings and a salty tongue. His relationship with these animals is rendered without a lick of sentimentality, but it bestows the most resonant and powerful feelings in the reader compared to anywhere else in the book. The care and feeding of dependents bring out the Kid’s protective instincts and help keep him focused.

The book is divided into five parts. Along the way, Banks dips into rhetorical digressions on sex, pornography, geography, and human nature, slowing down the momentum and disengaging the tension. These intervals are formal and stiff, although they are eventually braided into the story at large. However, despite these static flourishes, the story progresses with confidence and strength.

Most characters, whether stand-up citizens or sex offenders, have a moniker, which deliberately mechanizes them, but between the author and reader, humanization occurs between the pages. There’s Shyster, the pedophilic, disbarred lawyer and ex-Senator; Otis, the Rabbit, an elderly, disabled member of the tribe; and a Hemingway-esque character, the Writer, who incidentally resembles Banks himself; and others who personify their names.

Overall, the languid pace of the novel requires steadfast patience, but commitment to it has a fine payoff. Readers are rewarded with a thrilling denouement and a pensive but provocative ending. It inspires contemplation and dynamic discussion, and makes you think utterly outside the box.

Read my full review on http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2... (mostlyfiction.com) ...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Robert rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: give-to-goodwill

What is wrong with the world out there? This dreadful, pretentious, simple-minded, badly structured, cliche-ridden book was not only recommended to me by my shrink (and that's *really* worrying) but it was reviewed by the NY Times thus: "Banks may be the most compassionate fiction writer working today ... Banks remains our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American male ... 'Lost Memory of Skin' is a major new work by Russell Banks destined to be a canonical novel of its time."

OK, ...more

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Dec 05, 2011 Andrew rated it did not like it

Shelves: general-fiction

Does anyone else think this writer's style is awful? My brain gets tired following the rambling, run-on sentences. The book has an interesting premise, but I am not about to endure 400 pages of sentences like this one:

"But he hasn't spoken to any of them not even his mother in over a year and whenever he accidentally on the street spots somebody he once knew slightly from school or from hanging out at the mall in the old days or his job at the light store before he enlisted in the army which hap ...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Kathrina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-fiction, lock-up

Everything I want to say about this book feels more like a defense than a review, and I don't want to go that road. For some reason, maybe it's my several years working with sex offenders in a prison book group, watching them empathize and identify with the same characters I empathize and identify with, or it's the injustices I've researched in offender and ex-offender access barriers to information and resources that can help rebuild their lives, and the intentional structure of our society tha ...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Larry Bassett rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

I like books that deal with social issues. Lost Memory of Skin did that with a topic that is not common in current fiction but is a significant but mostly hidden issue: homeless convicted sex offenders. It humanizes people who are most commonly reviled and helps us realize that this is our problem and not just theirs and may have something to say about our development of relationships in this computer and digital age.

This book includes a tour of a place where convicted sex offenders live for la ...more

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Sep 28, 2011 jo rated it it was ok

i have read books by russell banks that i have liked a lot -- i have a tremendously fond memory of Rule of the Bone and Continental Drift and his book about liberia, The Darling, certainly has value -- it's a pretty brutal look at liberia's terrible history of massacres, though i'm always a bit wary of books about africa's wounds written by first worlders.

still.

this book would get 5 stars solely for the fact that it focuses on the horrible plight of convicted sex offenders, a violation of human i have read books by russell banks that i have liked a lot -- i have a tremendously fond memory of Rule of the Bone and Continental Drift and his book about liberia, The Darling, certainly has value -- it's a pretty brutal look at liberia's terrible history of massacres, though i'm always a bit wary of books about africa's wounds written by first worlders.

still.

this book would get 5 stars solely for the fact that it focuses on the horrible plight of convicted sex offenders, a violation of human rights so blatant it makes your stomach hurt. since almost no one knows what paroled sex offenders must go through, i recommend the book just so that folks might learn what we as a society do -- the human sacrifices we require -- in the name of our fantasy of "wholesomeness." sex is the ultimate canary in the coalmine. if you are following the republican primaries you know what i am talking about. never mind poverty, third-world-level education, perennial wars, lack of basic healthcare. it's the sex lives of americans who determine whether we are a good or a bad nation. end of debate.

so, sex offenders, alone among felons, enjoy the privilege of being banned from the proximity of children for a ridiculous amount of years after completion of their sentence, and of being on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives. to qualify as a sex offenders it is enough to be, say, a 19 year old who had sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, or to have been caught with your dick in your hand in a public place (say you were talking a piss; say you are homeless; say you got very very unlucky). i kid you not.

in miami, where this book is set, sex offenders used to have (for all i know still have) only three places in which they could live. every other spot on the map was within the prohibited 2,500 ft from a school, playground, homeless shelter etc. the three places were: 1) under a specific bridge of the julia tuttle causeway 2) at the airport and 3) in the south everglades. since places 2) and 3) were not exactly practicable, this little sex offender city sprouted under the bridge, where these guys lived in tents or makeshift shanties while trying to keep a day job and support themselves. occasionally the police would raid the shanty town for sanitary reasons. it was awful.

the miami herald and other news outlet (google "miami sex offenders") brought this shame to the attention of the public and now the men have been relocated. i should know where but i don't. i'm sure it's not much better.

so this is the subject of this book. the protagonist, known only as the Kid, is a very shy 22 year old who grew up in a dismally neglectful family and developed an addiction to porn (banks has theory about why people develop “perverse” sexual desires). one day, trying to overcome his almost total isolation, arranged to hook up with a 14 year old he had met online. father called the police, end of story. the Kid is now entirely uninterested in sex and wholly interested in making it through the day. he's also so internalized the sex offender label that he could not perceive himself as anything else.

etc. etc. there is a story but it's a lame story and the book drags. i didn't even understand how it ended. i'm talking about the last 4 lines. i don't get them.

so, not a spectacular literary effort, but clearly banks cares about these guys and spends some serious effort trying to make the reader understand what goes on in the mind of the sex offender and what goes on in the society who punishes him so harshly.
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Mar 12, 2015 Rob rated it really liked it

Russell Banks’ Lost Memory of Skin is a very, very good book that’s very, very hard to like. Actually, I take that back. It’s easy to like if you’re a reader who accepts that protagonists can be flawed, possibly beyond redemption. If you’re a fan of Banks, you know to expect this. This is, after all, the same guy who’s made a career of trafficking in problematic characters – from militant abolitionist John Brown (Cloudsplitter) to an opportunistic lawyer and incestuous father (The Sweet Hereafte Russell Banks’ Lost Memory of Skin is a very, very good book that’s very, very hard to like. Actually, I take that back. It’s easy to like if you’re a reader who accepts that protagonists can be flawed, possibly beyond redemption. If you’re a fan of Banks, you know to expect this. This is, after all, the same guy who’s made a career of trafficking in problematic characters – from militant abolitionist John Brown (Cloudsplitter) to an opportunistic lawyer and incestuous father (The Sweet Hereafter) to a perpetually angry drunk (Affliction). So when it becomes clear that the main character in Lost Memory of Skin is a convicted sex offender, your attitude will largely depend on how familiar you are with Banks’ work. And even if you’re very familiar, like I am, it’s still going to be one of the most uncomfortable reading experiences you’re likely to have.

The Kid is the book’s anchor, the sex offender we meet in the opening chapter, newly released from prison and nervously going to the public library (a forbidden location) to access the Internet (a forbidden activity) to verify for himself his presence on the National Sex Offender Registry. He’s scared away when his photo pops up on the screen and the librarian recognizes him, and he flees to the Causeway, an area beneath an overpass where local sex offenders have pitched tents and built shanties because it’s one of only three places in the county where they won’t be within 2,500 feet of children. One afternoon he meets the Professor, a morbidly obese academic from the local university who wants to interview the Kid for a research project. It’s the Professor’s hypothesis that sex offenders have only been led to offend because they don’t feel in control of any other aspect of their lives, and they can therefore be redeemed by having some measure of control and success – jobs and responsibilities – that give them the confidence they need to no longer assert their control by preying on the young. Lost Memory of Skin is primarily about the relationship that develops between the Kid and the Professor – friends would be overstating things – and how what begins as a simple interview project develops into a weirdly symbiotic partnership.

The question throughout the book – the problem that the whole thing hinges on – is if the Kid is beyond redemption. Banks wisely withholds the nature of his crime for a while, but I can’t do that here and still talk about what I think is a central theme of the book. So …

HERE BE SPOILERS

Banks makes the Kid more a pitiable character than a reprehensible one, but rather than making things easy on himself this opens up a moral gray area that’s far more satisfying than if the Kid were an obvious bad guy. He’s painted as a neglected child, cared for by a single mother more concerned with finding a man than taking care of her only child. The Kid has no friends and no girlfriend, and almost by accident he stumbles across online pornography. He quickly becomes obsessed, probably addicted, and rather than attempt to forge meaningful relationships with his peers, simply drifts around in a fog of online videos and masturbation. He enlists in the Army but finds himself just as friendless there. In a misguided attempt to force camaraderie on the rest of his platoon, the Kid buys a bunch of pornographic DVDs to hand out, but is busted during inspection and discharged. Back in his mother’s home, he returns to the Internet, and that’s where things get tricky.

The Kid strikes up an online correspondence with a teenage girl. She initially claims to be 18, then admits she’s 14. This begins as an innocent conversation about the Kid’s pet iguana, Iggy, but it slowly escalates over a period of weeks and ultimately becomes more explicit. Eventually the Kid schedules a rendezvous at her home, shows up with a backpack full of beer, porn, and condoms, and is busted by the police in what is clearly a sting to catch sexual predators.

And here’s where Banks has been very canny with what I think is meant to be criticism of these kinds of operations, as well as sex offender laws in general. The escalation to explicitness that I mentioned earlier is initiated and facilitated entirely by the girl, with the Kid playing along only when the girl prompts him. It’s never made clear if there ever was a girl or if the online conversations were with the police all along, so if you’re reading it the way I’m reading it, there’s an argument to be made that the Kid is the real victim in this situation, manipulated into a potential crime by police who preyed on a lonely, depressed individual. Of course the Kid should have never gone to her house (again, assuming there’s a her at all), should have known the difference between right and wrong, should have steered clear altogether. Of course it’s disgusting behavior. But I keep being drawn back to the issue of manipulation. If it was a police operation all along, and the Kid was only going to “her” house because he had been goaded into it by law enforcement, is the Kid really guilty of anything? He certainly never commits a sexual act. As the conversation plays out, he never even propositions the girl. He’s guilty of being a skeezy dude who shows up at a teenage girl’s house with beer and porn, and that’s about it. Gross, yes, but is it worthy of the penalty, which is six months in jail, ten years with a GPS bracelet on his ankle, and a lifetime of stigmatization on the Sex Offender Registry?

I don’t know. Even as I typed some of those sentences it felt indefensible. He went. He had designs. Surely that counts for something. And I think that’s where the Kid is sort of an ingenious creation. He doesn’t give the reader an easy way out, and he also allows us to ask tough questions about some of our country’s legal practices.

FOR THE SPOILER-AVERSE, IT IS NOW SAFE TO READ AGAIN

Also on Banks’ radar are the restrictions placed on the sex offenders in Calusa County (Banks never says Florida by name, but he’s not kidding anyone). They can’t be within 2,500 feet of schools, playgrounds, libraries – anywhere there’s likely to be children. That leaves them with their shantytown under the Causeway, the international terminal at the airport, and the Penzacola Swamp (a stand-in for the Everglades). This restriction lasts for ten years. Do you see the problem with this situation? How easy is it to get a job when your address is the swamp? How likely are you to gain meaningful employment when you’re living in a tent under the highway? In this situation the sex offenders are released straight from prison and into ten years of homelessness, which, let’s face it, after ten years will likely exist into perpetuity. I’m all for making sure offenders pay their debt to society – and in many cases they deserve all they get and more, especially when small children are the victims – but the book makes us ask if this lifetime penalty is appropriate for lesser offenders. Does the Kid deserve his life sentence, based solely on the circumstances? Is he beyond redemption? Banks gives us a definitive answer at the end, but the beauty of this ugly book is that it leaves room for dissent.

There’s more – much, much more – to say. It’s not an easy read. The Kid is not an easy character to like, nor is the Professor (whom I haven’t really discussed at all, but about whom I could easily write another thousand words). But if you want to read something that will make you ask important questions about our society, the importance of community, and the possibility of redemption, Lost Memory of Skin is worth the discomfort.

Read all my reviews at goldstarforrobotboy.net ...more

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Apr 10, 2012 K rated it it was ok

Recommended to K by: M

Shelves: intense-sad-dark-or-bleak, we-re-all-going-to-hell, should-ve-been-shorter

Hmm. I really did like the premise of this one. Banks takes a young sex offender and makes him sympathetic, giving him a minor offense (one which ends up being largely theoretical when all is said and done) which is understandable in the context of his sad childhood and incredible social isolation and lack of nurturing. The offender, called "the Kid," must take up residence under a causeway together with other offenders who are rendered homeless by restrictions forbidding them to live within a c ...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Betsy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is a disturbing book to read because it focuses on the outcasts of today's world: sex offenders. The larger question posed in myriad ways is this, "What do we do with the pariahs of society? Where do they live? How can they live?"

As with Banks's Rule of the Bone, the central character is a young boy, though in this case the Kid is barely in his twenties. His associates are a motley crew who, like him, live under a viaduct. "The Professor" plays the corpulent symbol of the decadence of over ...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Alex Templeton rated it it was amazing

This book ended up being my top adult fiction pick of 2011, which should not be such a surprise considering that Banks’ “The Sweet Hereafter” is pretty much my top adult fiction pick of all time. What is evidenced in both that and this novel is that Banks has a tremendous empathy for his characters; he’s able to look into the darkness of their souls and come out seeing humanity rather than darkness, depravity, and what have you. His protagonists in this novel are the Kid, a teenage sex offender, ...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Ruth Seeley rated it liked it

Banks has always written about the disenfranchised, and this novel is no exception. Sometimes his characters are the disenfranchised by birth, but more often it's those who've managed to do it to themselves. It's a rather unsparing look at a segment of society we prefer not to know about, convicted sex offenders who've paid their dues/done their time, but continue to be condemned to a half life of homelessness and electronic surveillance. So much for rehabilitation when the conditions of your re ...more

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Oct 14, 2017 Harriett Milnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-star-books, reading-on-e-reader

Good story built around the situation sex offenders find themselves in when they are released from jail. The Kid, cannot live within a certain number of feet of any place where children live, go to school or meet. He also cannot leave the county. In Lost Memory of Skin, this leaves him 2 places to live: under a highway and in the Everglades. I did not understand the insertion of the geological formation of the Everglades. I also thought the ending was a little far-fetched, but a good story.

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Jan 22, 2013 Jay Gertzman rated it it was amazing

Russell Bank’s _Lost Memory OF Skin _ is about a 22 year old who was entrapped by the FBI, with the help of a 14 year old girl's patriotic and religious father , into visiting the chick that he had met on the internet, which he shouldn't have done. He never saw her, but must live, with a tracking anklet, so far from any church, school or house that his only recourse is to live under a causeway with other so-called pedophiles. Banks is great at showing how the nation's media have sexualized child Russell Bank’s _Lost Memory OF Skin _ is about a 22 year old who was entrapped by the FBI, with the help of a 14 year old girl's patriotic and religious father , into visiting the chick that he had met on the internet, which he shouldn't have done. He never saw her, but must live, with a tracking anklet, so far from any church, school or house that his only recourse is to live under a causeway with other so-called pedophiles. Banks is great at showing how the nation's media have sexualized childhood in adverts to sell them and their families clothes, accessories, food, and shoes, etc. Citizens know they cannot control their kids' early teasing, prurient sexualization. They need a scapegoat, a person(s) who they can hold responsible, since Corporation America’s citizens are steered from the real culprit, their commodified culture and their ignorant (b/c unreflective), although neither stupid nor cold-hearted, selves. I saw a film recently about another example: the Central Park 5. Five black kids without the resouces to withstand the good cop-bad cop routine. They "confessed" to rape and assault, and spent from 7 to 14 years in prison, before being let go after a confession by, in fact, the real culprit himself, who the cops knew about at the time of the incident, but had already worked a "confession" out of the 5. Mayor Koch had been screaming about "monsters" and he was delighted at the quick "solution." Just the tabloid coverage was an amazing example of 1989 racism, and the film ends with stating we are not a "post-racist" society.

_Lost Memory’s_ protagonist, the 22-year old "Kid," is shamed by his situation (and constant survceillance (today we are all under it), without any faith in himself, afraid of any feeling, even if sincerely offered by a friend. He cares for animals instead. Enter a strange, brilliant, very fat and tall, professor of sociology, who tries with some success to cooperate with the authorities to prevent the cops from breaking up the "sex offenders" encampment when a DA needs a good rep boost (also sounds familiar).

But the professor has a shadowy past. He says he is being stalked by the CIA, which has found out he himself may be a sex offender, or which is now afraid of secrets he has for when he worked for them. CIA suspicion means “disappearing” the non-trustworthy person. It is also possible the prof was in fact a pedophile. Banks' description of the way he has "compartmentalized” his wife so his loved ones cannot know him is very provocative.

The novel is in paperback, with a brilliantly tactile cover, including an iguana. The latter was the Kid's pet before the cops killed it when they brutally invaded the enclave under the causeway—a publicity stunt of course, just as the cops raids on the old times Square’s movies And porn stores were. The Kid is just about as helpless as the iguana, but that seems to change, miraculously.

Bank's novels are a history of America, a brilliant reality check, just before the dark.
...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Steven Buechler rated it it was amazing

One of my Top Ten reads of this year. This is what good literature is suppose to be about - looking at society and asking difficult questions about what is wrong with it. A MUST READ!!!

Page 72
"He opens Larry Somerset's Holy Bible. It's the only book in the tent. The Kid's never been much of a reader and he has hoped for a long time, every since he first heard of it. that he suffer from attention deficit disorder because in school and in the army most people regarded him as borderline retarded. H ...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Tuck rated it it was amazing

Shelves: noir, oh-loyd-i-wanna-be-hearkbroken

:0
looks at usa's sex offender laws, usa orgy of 'law n order', usa's coming apoc storm of fat cats, freaks, weather, cops, kids, and stupid people, usas inadequacy and immorality.

nancy has a really good review here, that could make a whole lot more sense https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

...more

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Jul 03, 2015 Krista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015

Lost Memory of Skin was a timely read, because right in this morning's headlines is: Florida Man Gets 2.5 Years for Having Sex on the Beach. Despite protesting that there was no actual sex going on beneath their blanket, this man will be going to jail for two and a half years, his girlfriend received time served, and the two of them will be on the National Sex Offender Registry for the rest of their lives. And the thing about being put on the registry – as demonstrated in the book – is that ther ...more

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Feb 05, 2017 Booklover, Indianapolis rated it liked it

Shelves: bookclub, own-in-e-format, non-romance, read-in-2017

(Jan) When you tell people you are reading a book about a young man who is on the Sex Offender Registry, it's hard to get them interested in hearing more. The book was well written for the most part - I'd describe it as interestingly written. We never know the name of the main character (well, it's Billy, I think) - he's referred to as The Kid. The Kid is a slightly built 21 year old virgin who was raised by a mom who was not the best mom, and left alone, he discovered porn at a very young age a (Jan) When you tell people you are reading a book about a young man who is on the Sex Offender Registry, it's hard to get them interested in hearing more. The book was well written for the most part - I'd describe it as interestingly written. We never know the name of the main character (well, it's Billy, I think) - he's referred to as The Kid. The Kid is a slightly built 21 year old virgin who was raised by a mom who was not the best mom, and left alone, he discovered porn at a very young age and never really looked back. Lacking in basic social skills and much more than a basic education, he makes a few mistakes and first gets booted from the army and then after a failed assignation with a teenage girl, ends up in jail. Now out, he's on the SO list and due to the rules and regulations for those on the list, is forced to live under the Causeway. If the book had focused more on his background and his current life, I'd have given it a 4* easily. However, he meets The Professor - a grossly overweight, incredibly intelligent man who wants to do research on the men who live under the Causeway - almost all of them are also on the SO registry. The Prof helps them set up a living situation with rules and regulations, all of which was interesting, but then a hurricane blows through, the area is flooded and most lose everything, and they scatter. Again, following the Kid to his next living situation was a good segment - but then there came the rest of the book, which focused way too much on the Professor. His storyline a) didn't make sense (I was left still questioning) and b) took away from the Kid, who I found much more interesting to spend time with.

This book does bring up interesting questions about the lives of Sex Offenders. Yes, some are truly bad, bad guys (and gals) who sexually and physically abuse their victims of all ages. Bu then there are those like The Kid, who never really did anything (at 21, he planned to have sex with this girl who was flirting with him online and invited him over to her home - I think she was 14? And I'm not trying to victim shame or anything, but there are definitely young and middle teens who put themselves out there in a very sexual way that would make a 21 year old think - well, why not? And we all know if it was a 21 year old girl who was trying to hook up with a young-middle teen, the freak out would not have been as severe, if it happened at all). Was he guilty? Yes. Does he belong on a list that will punish him for life? 100% no. In many (most?) states, the list of what makes someone eligible for the SO list is incredibly broad - from urinating in public and exposing yourself to rape and child molestation. You can be Bernie Madoff, who ruined the lives of tens of thousands of people, you can be a murdered, you can lie and steal and damage and who knows what else - yet when you get out, you are out. You may be on parole, but you have the freedom to get a job and live anywhere you want. If Charles Manson was released tomorrow, he'd have less restrictions then someone on the SO list. Once on the SO list, you can't live within a certain amount of yards from a school, a library, a park, etc. - leaving most released SO no where to live. Yet you can't leave the county. And you can't live on the streets, because that's vagrancy and you can end up back in jail, which is what people want anyway. And forget about most of them finding a job. It's a broken system that seems make the punishment often more severe than the crime, and it's a never-ending punishment. For those like The Kid, he's now forced into filthy homelessness for at least 10 years (not sure if that meant his parole was over and he could leave the area but still has to register, or if his registrations requirements ended then too). I don't know what the answer is, but I do know the way it is now is not working. ...more

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Mar 27, 2014 Miriam Bridenne rated it really liked it

Calusa—a city strikingly similar to Miami, nowadays. Under a causeway that shelters sex offenders, the Kid lives in a tent with his bracelet alarm and the obligation to stay at 2,500 feet from anyone under 18 years old. At 22, he feels like a stranger amidst this crowd of outcasts. He works as a dishwasher in a restaurant, stays on his own and talks to no one but Iggy, the 6-foot long iguana he has owned since boyhood. Raised by a neglectful single mom—much more of a lost child than an adult her ...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Lauren rated it did not like it

this is a poorly written, shallow book missing all the character development and compelling story line of his other novels. I knew it was about a young man living on the streets after being convicted of a sexual crime so I expected it to be dark and hard to read yet was interested as I thought it would offer a unique perspective on a difficult topic. Based on the great reviews I read I was looking forward to reading.

After reading most of the book, and other reviews, I am left wondering if I read ...more

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Jan 25, 2013 Glen rated it liked it

I like Russell Banks enough to say that this is not one of his best books. He swings for the fences by taking on the modern day equivalent of the leper--the sex offender--and exploring what it means to be totally outcast by society while being, in many ways, just like everyone else, only guilty. Alas, he ends up hitting at best a sacrifice fly, scoring on a few counts but missing on some others. The introduction of the character of the professor is unnecessarily convoluted and frustratingly vagu ...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Gerhard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, literary-fiction

SF has long grappled with the dehumanising impact of the Internet -- you just have to recall the 'meat' from Gibson's Neuromancer. JG Ballard also wrote often about the 'death of affect', in how technology not only estranges us from our essential humanity, but sets loose our moral compass. The NY Times review of Skin breathlessly called the book 'canonical', conveniently forgetting such antecedents. What I found more impressive and troubling about Skin was its impassioned account of the conseque ...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Debbie "DJ" rated it liked it

I have no idea how to rate this book. The subject matter is that of child pornography. What do we do with the different levels of acts committed, and where can these people live, or even get a job. The true pariahs of our society and how we treat them. It is actually a story of a young man and what he indures. It asks a lot of important questions of us as a society. What is the truth? There were lots of times when I wasn't going to finish it as I do not like reading about perverted sex, yet th ...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Anna Janelle rated it really liked it

7-14 Final Thoughts:

It was a game-changer in terms of my thoughts regarding sex offenders and our society's prevailing laws regarding where they can set up residence. I'm still on the fence regarding my final thoughts and feelings in that my head and heart are don't agree. On the one hand, I'm horrified by the very act of sex offences; on the other hand, I'm not certain that our current rules and regulations account for the different types of offences and offenders. Regardless, I'm not comfortab 7-14 Final Thoughts:

It was a game-changer in terms of my thoughts regarding sex offenders and our society's prevailing laws regarding where they can set up residence. I'm still on the fence regarding my final thoughts and feelings in that my head and heart are don't agree. On the one hand, I'm horrified by the very act of sex offences; on the other hand, I'm not certain that our current rules and regulations account for the different types of offences and offenders. Regardless, I'm not comfortable with the thought of a convicted sex offender living next to me (and I have a feeling that this sense of comfort will radically decrease as I have children). In the same sense, this novel challenged my thoughts about rules regarding the online Sex Offender Registry and the rules surrounding where sex offenders can legally reside. Namely, what chance do these primarily male offenders have at a successful life post-conviction? There is no hope of privacy or secrecy surrounding their offense. Everyone has the opportunity to discover the details of their past life - with no opportunity for digression or selective revelation. Again, what hope do these offenders have for rehabilitation?

SPOILER ALERT: The answer is none. Which was confusing to me because 75% of the way through the novel Kid had an opportunity to succeed. Even 90% of the way through the novel, he seemed to have a chance at normalcy - living on the older couple's houseboat, a couple that still accepted him after learning about his past transgression. He stood in the Garden of Eden (to stick with the long running metaphor Banks' keeps reverting to throughout the course of the novel) and decided that he did not deserve to stay. Even though Kid is still a virgin - even though he STILL has not kissed a girl despite of (or perhaps because of) his conviction, he shuns the society that does not accept him and reverts back to living under the Causeway with the rest of the offenders. Kid decides his pets deserve a better quality of life than that which he condemns himself to and leaves them with the older couple. He has a choice - and he makes the decision to rejoin the rest of refugees as a homeless offender. This choice was heartbreaking to me. Almost as heartbreaking as the final sentences of the book, which leaves Kid pondering the quality and availability of pornography after he gets off probation in another nine years. While I wouldn't be inclined to predict that Kid will re-offend, who's to say that the company (i.e. other offenders) that he keeps could change his prospective in another few years?

The Professor's story-line was certainly compelling. At the end of the novel, his life (covert government double-agent or corrupt pedophile?) and death (suicide or government cover-up/murder) is still not made clear to the reader. It is clear that no evidence exists to prove one version of the truth over the other. While Kid is inclined to believe that he is a pedophile, the Professor is not the Dr. Hoo that had conversed with the Shyster (via previous emails) under the Causeway.

Definitely a four star read. Most probably a four-and-a-half star read for it's social relevance and ability to provoke thought and challenge beliefs. Not the lightest/easiest read. I would certain revisit this novel in the future and purchase it for my physical library (it was read on my Kindle).

7-11-12

I'm including some thoughts and quotes that I'd like to remember while I'm still in the process of reading the book. I don't think that I've "highlighted" any book so much on my Kindle as I have with this novel. Like I have mentioned before, it's extremely thought provoking and somewhat disorienting - to have your long-established thoughts about something so (seemingly) clear-cut as convicted sex offenders.

QUOTE: "The Professor's theories about pedophilia are rapidly evolving. When a society commodifies its children by making them into a consumer group, dehumanizing them by converting them into a crucial, locked-in segment of the economy, and then proceeds to eroticize its products in order to sell them, the children gradually come to be perceived by the rest of the community and by the children themselves as sexual objects. And on the ladder of power, where power is constructed sexually instead of economically, the children end up at the bottom rung...Because it's not about sex, and it's not about gender; they carry no weight in the equation. It's about power. Control. Dominion. Dominance? Well, yes. When you feel you have nothing and no one you can dominate, you turn to children. And when children have been transformed into sexual objects and you have no other way of controlling them, you dominate them sexually."

"These men are human beings, no chimpanzees or gorillas. They belong to the same species as we do. And we're not hardwired to commit these acts. If, as it appears, the proportion of the male population who commit these acts has increased exponentially in recent years, and it's no simply because of the criminalization of the behavior and a consequent increase in the reportage of these crimes, then there's something in the wider culture itself that has changed in the recent years, and these men are like the canary in the mine shaft, the first among up to respond to that change, as if their social and ethical immune systems, the controls over their behaviors, have somehow been damaged or compromised. And if we don't identify the specific changes in our culture that are attacking our social and ethical immune systems, which we usually refer to as taboos, then before long we'll all succumb."

It's a very theoretical way to look at sex offenders. Instead of condemning them for their actions, the novel is looking at these men waste by-products from our rotten society - a society that does not permanently incarcerate these men - but has no room for them outside of jail.

I'm roughly 50% through with the novel, but I feel something not-so-nice brewing on the horizon for Kid. I do have two complaints: 1). For as much as the Professor claims to be observing, he's most certainly inserting himself in Kid's life - with good intentions but for selfish motives. The not-so-nice feeling centers around the Professor's (see also: Kid's) community; the Prof is acting as social engineer but is he taking on a society of individuals that he doesn't fully understand? 2). Kid's story behind his crime is a let-down to the reader only in that he's not an actual sexual offender in that he violently raped someone (think - "To Catch a Predator" starring an awkward teenage virgin showing up at the door of a fourteen year old). (And I know that it's pretty terrible that I'm let down by that - but with the awful circumstances surrounding Kid's current lifestyle, I was at least hoping he'd done something equally awful to justify the curcumstances that he's found himself in). And I know that's terrible to say, "not an actual sexual offender." I know that's not PC. And Kid's behavior is certainly not ethically or morally or legally right. I'm not defending creeping on children on the internet, and I'm also not advocating anyone who makes sexual advances or plans to make sexual advances om children in real life. But can it be compared to a man who rapes at knife point? A serial child molester? A child pornographer? All this leads me to the next thinking point - should all sexual offenders be classified the same way? Should Kid be lumped in with the chomos (child molesters, slang picked up from the novel) under the Causeway? I’m not so sure. It makes me second guess watching shows like the aforementioned "To Catch a Predator" - because those men (regardless of their slime-factor) are lonely, disturbed people whose lives are distroyed and family members irrevocably shamed all for the sake of entertainment. Again, I'm not saying that these men are innocent or in-the-right; they are criminals. But are the punishments and consequences worthy of the crime? ...more

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Dec 17, 2018 Adam rated it really liked it

Overly verbose, with a loose, shaggy style, when parable-like clarity might have made for a more obviously rewarding reading experience. However, the book only seems more sage and sad now that America has a sexual offender elected to the highest office in the land. Having dated a 16/17-year-old girl/ child (if we're being clear-eyed and honest) at the same age as The Kid and with a similarly lonely (though less impoverished) background, I found much of the novel hit very close to home. Indeed, I Overly verbose, with a loose, shaggy style, when parable-like clarity might have made for a more obviously rewarding reading experience. However, the book only seems more sage and sad now that America has a sexual offender elected to the highest office in the land. Having dated a 16/17-year-old girl/ child (if we're being clear-eyed and honest) at the same age as The Kid and with a similarly lonely (though less impoverished) background, I found much of the novel hit very close to home. Indeed, I wonder if Banks' argument had have been stronger had The Kid's "victim" (quotation marks because she may not exist) been 16 or 17 herself, highlighting how someone can be just a skeezy young man in one state and an irredeemable monster just one state over for exactly the same actions. I doubt a day has gone past over the last decade in which I have not thought about the fact that were I not sat here in Britain, but in California, I'd be likely labelled as a non-human monster due entirely to my own youthful selfishness, entitlement and stupidity, like The Kid. As such, I appreciated the bitter irony of the book's ending - while The Kid might look forward to 10 years in the future (the gap of years I am now at, as it happens) as being the end of his parole, we know that as a lifetime sex offender his only future options are likely homelessness or suicide. Indeed, though I am against capital punishment, I believe execution with a sincere expression of "God have mercy on your soul" is more merciful and fundamentally honest than a society pretending such a felon is free after a year when really "they know that we know that they know" they are forever outside of the human race, persona non grata. Of course, this is how many perpetrators make their survivors feel so we can consider it a fair and steely punishment in many cases so the question is perhaps more one of usefulness and efficiency and whether all such punishments are conducted by the state in good faith. It is a queasy irony that so many of the perpetrators identified by Project Yewtree here in Britain or #metoo in America are of the same Baby Boomer generation that, in office, created Sex Offender Registries in the 1990s and rapidly increased zoning restriction. As with far less serious drug crimes, one wonders how many of those who passed the laws broke precisely the same crimes in their adolescence and early adulthood. Think Bill Clinton, Brett Kavanaugh, Trump, et al.

**SPOILERS**
'Lost Memory of Skin' is to be praised for stirring up these kinds of thoughts and debates. I find it interesting that Banks in interview says that he originally intended for The Kid to finish the novel upon his boat, but felt that would be letting him off the hook for his crime and so sentenced him to live out his parole at the camp, with The Kid finally internalising his criminality/ otherness from law-abiding society. This makes me fear that Banks genuinely believes that The Kid could be re-accepted into society come the end of his parole, which it seems most readers recognise as very unlikely indeed. ...more

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Nov 27, 2020 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Even though the characters were not likable, it is a powerful portrayal of the life of near despair and almost giving up. With the deck stacked against you and your own poor choices added to that, one kind gesture or positive experience such as the truth being revealed really can make a difference. But what if you don't think you're worth it? Find your supportive tribe, visit a library, and take responsibility. The cynic in me is left wondering how often this actually happens, yet I will continu ...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Susan (aka Just My Op) rated it really liked it

Shelves: social-issues-or-commentary, arc-edition

A novel about a convicted, homeless sex offender, the creepy fellow sex offenders who live under a causeway with him, and a professor who treats them like lab rats – how can this book possibly be good? I was a little apprehensive about reading this one because I really don't want to read anything explicit about such an awful subject. Fortunately, there wasn't too much detail about the really horrible things that some people do although there were some sexually explicit terms and acts that made m A novel about a convicted, homeless sex offender, the creepy fellow sex offenders who live under a causeway with him, and a professor who treats them like lab rats – how can this book possibly be good? I was a little apprehensive about reading this one because I really don't want to read anything explicit about such an awful subject. Fortunately, there wasn't too much detail about the really horrible things that some people do although there were some sexually explicit terms and acts that made me uncomfortable just to read.

The Kid is a registered sex offender, has to wear a GPS anklet at all times and keep it charged, and has almost nowhere to live because he has to stay in the county but has to stay at least 2500 feet away from children, eliminating everywhere except a camp under the causeway, the swamp, and a terminal at the airport. The Professor, an outsider, a pretty odd guy with secrets, befriends the Kid as part of a social experiment.

I really cared about the Kid, could see the world from his viewpoint, and I liked that he tried so hard to take care of his animals, not always successfully. For the most part, I didn't learn much about the other sex offenders except for a nasty politician whom I would have rather not known about, but that is because most of the characters don't want to be known. The Professor...what is the truth about him?

This time the Kid doesn't resist. He's remembered that he's an object, a thing, not a human being with a will and a goal, and that he's only capable of reacting, not acting. The Professor's the human being here, not the Kid.

The book moved along at a good pace and, for the most part, I liked the style of writing. Dialogue in italics instead of quotes took a little interpretation – who was speaking and to whom? As well as being a very entertaining novel, this story is also a social commentary, but the reader must decide for herself what the answers should be.

I was given an advance reader's edition by the publisher so the quote may have changed in the published edition. Thank you to ECCO. ...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Larry H rated it liked it

It takes a talented author to make a sympathetic character out of one who has done something odious, but Russell Banks succeeds in his new book, Lost Memory of Skin. Sadly, other aspects of the book didn't fare quite as well.

The Kid is a 21-year-old, socially awkward misfit on probation from his conviction as a sex offender, after an attempt to meet an underage girl goes awry. Unable to live less than 2,500 feet from anywhere children might gather, he lives in a tent under a South Florida cause It takes a talented author to make a sympathetic character out of one who has done something odious, but Russell Banks succeeds in his new book, Lost Memory of Skin. Sadly, other aspects of the book didn't fare quite as well.

The Kid is a 21-year-old, socially awkward misfit on probation from his conviction as a sex offender, after an attempt to meet an underage girl goes awry. Unable to live less than 2,500 feet from anywhere children might gather, he lives in a tent under a South Florida causeway, in the company of a number of others who have committed similar and worse crimes. He knows what he did was wrong and truly wants to start anew, but can't seem to catch a break either keeping a menial job or a place to live. One day he encounters the Professor, a larger-than-life man (physically and figuratively) who believes the Kid will be an excellent resource for his studies on homelessness and sex offenders. In exchange for sharing his experiences, the Professor takes Kid under his wing and provides some assistance. But the Professor is a man with a number of his own secrets, and when those are revealed, the balance of power between the two shifts. Ultimately, this is a book about the importance of trusting yourself, and how difficult it is to trust others until you can master that skill.

With Kid and the Professor, Banks created very unique characters, characters with whom you certainly can't identify but at times can't help rooting for them. While the general thread of the plot is compelling, the story takes a very unnecessary turn after the Professor's secrets are revealed, and I really felt that twist undercut the story. And at times, Banks spent far too much time dwelling on Florida history and the Bible, which distracted from the actual characters you want to follow. A truly prolific writer, Banks has written two of my favorite books—The Sweet Hereafter and The Rule of the Bone, but I felt he tried a little too hard with this book. His writing, however, is still something to behold, so I'd encourage you to pick up one of his earlier books if you've never read him before. ...more

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About Russell Banks

Russell Banks

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Russell Banks is a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplit ...more

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“What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.” — 10 likes

“Boys like it when you talk to them as if they were grown men—at least he always did when he was a kid—because they pretend that’s what they are anyhow, grown-up men, and they do it for their entire lives.” — 9 likes

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