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Skin Grows Over
A young woman who has never learned how to grieve begins to come apart following the loss of the one friend who truly understood her. A mysterious and obsessive Humanist celebrant prepares to perform the most important funeral of her life. A world-weary and weather-beaten museum custodian resigns herself to hosting a mysterious ceremony that goes against everything she believes in. Connecting the three of them, a centuries-old bog mummy, hovering around it all, watching, waiting to be put to rest.
Skin Grows Over weaves realism with uncanny horror, using images of deep history and the otherworldly Scottish wilderness to tell a very modern tale about grief, queerness, and female embodiment. In a culture where dead women are objects of immaculate peaceful beauty existing only to be mourned by others, this grotesque and earthy dead woman who refuses to stay dead comes to represent the uncanny overlap of grief and female embodiment, in all its ugly humanity.
Praise for Skin Grows Over:
"Skin Grows Over is a haunting meditation on death, bodies, and difference. Ali, an untethered and unmoored young woman, is deeply affected by the death of her childhood friend Ana - even more so, because she had begun to push Ana away, and camouflage her own differences to better fit into the modern world. When Ali forms a tangible and uncanny connection with a female bog body, due to be laid to rest in a half-mystical, half-elegiac ceremony taking place in the wilderness of Flanders Moss, she is forced to confront her own buried grief, and the power - and sadness - those differences might bring.
Fans of Andrew Michael Hurley will find much to love in these remote, folk-horror-redolent landscapes; fans of Lucie McKnight Hardy will be delighted by Allan's intricate and deft characterisation, presenting many potential visions of female power and resilience. This is, quite simply, an extraordinary book, and Allan an astonishing new talent."
-- Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces
"Eerie and beautiful, this story explores the heartbreak of death and loss. Let it lead you through a deep, mystical world of incantations to the edge of the earth where haunted souls submerge, roped together in grief."
-- Anna Cheung, author of Where Decay Sleeps
"Skin Grows Over has the chilly bones of pure gothic horror with a warm, tender, utterly human heart at its centre. Fiercely queer and feminist, it draws together the historical and supernatural to tell a profoundly contemporary story about memory, identity and how we might find ourselves through those we have lost.
I loved this sensory, cinematic haunting which carried me from city to rain lashed country and moved me completely. Lyrical, literary and pacy, Skin Grows Over will capture the imagination, chill the marrow and move the emotions in equal measure and belongs among the best of contemporary horror writing."
-- Rose Ruane, author of This is Yesterday
Skin Grows Over weaves realism with uncanny horror, using images of deep history and the otherworldly Scottish wilderness to tell a very modern tale about grief, queerness, and female embodiment. In a culture where dead women are objects of immaculate peaceful beauty existing only to be mourned by others, this grotesque and earthy dead woman who refuses to stay dead comes to represent the uncanny overlap of grief and female embodiment, in all its ugly humanity.
Praise for Skin Grows Over:
"Skin Grows Over is a haunting meditation on death, bodies, and difference. Ali, an untethered and unmoored young woman, is deeply affected by the death of her childhood friend Ana - even more so, because she had begun to push Ana away, and camouflage her own differences to better fit into the modern world. When Ali forms a tangible and uncanny connection with a female bog body, due to be laid to rest in a half-mystical, half-elegiac ceremony taking place in the wilderness of Flanders Moss, she is forced to confront her own buried grief, and the power - and sadness - those differences might bring.
Fans of Andrew Michael Hurley will find much to love in these remote, folk-horror-redolent landscapes; fans of Lucie McKnight Hardy will be delighted by Allan's intricate and deft characterisation, presenting many potential visions of female power and resilience. This is, quite simply, an extraordinary book, and Allan an astonishing new talent."
-- Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces
"Eerie and beautiful, this story explores the heartbreak of death and loss. Let it lead you through a deep, mystical world of incantations to the edge of the earth where haunted souls submerge, roped together in grief."
-- Anna Cheung, author of Where Decay Sleeps
"Skin Grows Over has the chilly bones of pure gothic horror with a warm, tender, utterly human heart at its centre. Fiercely queer and feminist, it draws together the historical and supernatural to tell a profoundly contemporary story about memory, identity and how we might find ourselves through those we have lost.
I loved this sensory, cinematic haunting which carried me from city to rain lashed country and moved me completely. Lyrical, literary and pacy, Skin Grows Over will capture the imagination, chill the marrow and move the emotions in equal measure and belongs among the best of contemporary horror writing."
-- Rose Ruane, author of This is Yesterday
207 pages, Paperback
Published July 19, 2022
2 people are currently reading
233 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 10, 2022
This is a haunting, beautiful story about grief. The protagonist, a young woman who cannot process the death of a close friend attends a strange funeral of a bog mummy. Guided by the strange celebrant and the old custodian, haunted by the shadow of the mummy, she is forced to face her own loss.
July 29, 2022
A hauntingly beautiful story about loss and grief.
August 5, 2022
One of the best books I've read in ages, gorgeous prose, incredibly atmospheric, cannot recommend it enough
July 31, 2022
This is a spectacular book. It is haunting and beautiful and pure. A very honest novella about grief and expectations and reflecting on how we live and love.
July 21, 2025
This novella is a heartfelt and haunting tale of a young woman who's grieving her dead friend. It explores how religion has been used as a way to justify acts of cruelty throughout centuries. I've adored everything I've read that's published by Ghost Orchid Press, and this is no exception.
January 24, 2024
This is a perfect novella. It's everything I think horror can be.
It's full of these uncanny, familiar observations about life and loss, told with so much tension and so much palpable unsaid that it really is like this figure, hovering just to the side of every scene, so close you can feel the horror in your throat. Repressed sexuality, womanhood, what ancient and modern society thinks it is owed from the female body, what it means to be in a body are all explored in a really short book without any of it feeling out of time. It's handling of grief is vulnerable, honest, appropriately messy and perfectly paced. And the writing is the final blow that makes it all so devastatingly good.
I was reminded a bit of Ghost Wall and It Follows, but it's also its entirely own thing.
It's full of these uncanny, familiar observations about life and loss, told with so much tension and so much palpable unsaid that it really is like this figure, hovering just to the side of every scene, so close you can feel the horror in your throat. Repressed sexuality, womanhood, what ancient and modern society thinks it is owed from the female body, what it means to be in a body are all explored in a really short book without any of it feeling out of time. It's handling of grief is vulnerable, honest, appropriately messy and perfectly paced. And the writing is the final blow that makes it all so devastatingly good.
I was reminded a bit of Ghost Wall and It Follows, but it's also its entirely own thing.
July 31, 2022
3.5 / 5 stars
This book was very enjoyable and such an easy read - I done it in one day!
When it first started out, I was a bit unsure because the writing was a bit casual but the more I read, the more I got into it. Interesting take on grief and love.
Enjoyable book, short, and could recommend.
This book was very enjoyable and such an easy read - I done it in one day!
When it first started out, I was a bit unsure because the writing was a bit casual but the more I read, the more I got into it. Interesting take on grief and love.
Enjoyable book, short, and could recommend.
June 13, 2024
Beautifully written and nice sentiment - I’m always interested in anything about big bodies and the stories/ histories of them, and I enjoyed the exploration of religion as an oppressive force. However, I was half-way through before I knew what was happening and I found it more focused on the writing than the story which I struggle with.
February 9, 2023
A beautiful novella about death and grief, a great reflection on the pressure society puts on women, the hard work they have to endure in order to survive every day.
Its powerful words will stay with me like the gravel in Ali's palm, a painful and worthy reminder.
Its powerful words will stay with me like the gravel in Ali's palm, a painful and worthy reminder.
March 6, 2023
This is a beautifully written novella which deals with attitudes to death and grieving. I liked the characterisation of the three main characters and the description of the eerie setting on the moss where the bog mummy is found. I also wanted to read on to find out how it would end.
July 24, 2022
A beautiful reflection on death and how mourning looks different for everyone, including complicated feelings about our relationship with the deceased while they were alive.
October 1, 2024
in conclusion: that hurt
May 7, 2025
A beautiful exploration of grief, faith, womanhood and queerness
June 6, 2023
Haunting, atmospheric, and with beautiful prose, SKIN GROWS OVER depicts grief in a stark, palpable way. I devoured this novella in a few sittings, pausing only to catch my breath at the moments of genuine, heart-stopping horror laced through the story. I found much to relate to in this novella, particularly in the depiction of the relationship between Ali, our protagonist, and Ana, her friend, whose death has left Ali emotionally stuck and unable to grieve.
There's so much to enjoy in this novella. Well worth picking it up for a read!
There's so much to enjoy in this novella. Well worth picking it up for a read!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews