Cold Skin [Paperback]

In recounting the plot of this marvelous, disturbing novel to my pre-adolescent niece, my sister-in-law from the other room chimed in, saying: "This sounds like the movie 'The Killer Shrews.'" She came in a few minutes later as I was finishing up the story and told us that "The Killer Shrews," a B-movie from the 50s she'd seen on TV as a young girl, had caused her countless nightmares. Like COLD SKIN, the movie was set on an island at the end of the world, and similarly, the island was overrun by malevolent creatures: shrews made huge by exposure to atomic radiation in the movie, reptilian creatures in this novel.

This is one way to read COLD SKIN, as a sci-fi horror story or a fantasy adventure with plenty of action, unexpected reversals, gory battles with perverse outcomes, and male main characters who though dangerously at odds with each other, struggle to make common cause to prevail against alien invaders. This, in fact, is how I told the story to my niece, and it makes for a ripping good yarn. In her words: "This would make a great movie; I can see it all in my mind."

But, equally, COLD SKIN can also be read as a psychological thriller, as an investigation of the human species under stress and the altered mental states generated as an attempt to control an unpredictable and ostensibly savage environment. In this reading author Pinol succeeds as well: trapped in incredible circumstances, the unfolding psychodrama between the two "scientists" on the unnamed Antarctic island is credible, acutely rendered and often surprising.

Also possible is an ontological reading. There is a crucial moment in COLD SKIN when the narrator comes to question his response to and understanding of the creatures who inhabit the island and the surrounding waters, creatures that seem upon reflection not to be mere beasts but to have qualities that he recognizes in himself, e.g., a sense of play, of wonder, and even an understanding of jealousy. In other words, he sees they are more than reptilian brained. He recognizes their "otherness" is no more "other" than the man, Gruner, with whom he shares the island and their last refuge, the lighthouse. The impossibility of truly knowing and entering into another being's consciousness is a recurring problem for all the protagonists.

Further, it can be read as an allegory of the age of exploration when Western conquistadors and settlers armed with Western technologies, conquered and subjugated the worlds they found, classifying the peoples they encountered as savages to justify taking their land and destroying their ways of life.

On the literary side, Frazer's "The Golden Bough" is mentioned in two significant scenes. One of the more famous passages this late-nineteenth century examination of myth and fable seems particularly relevant to COLD SKIN: "The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid." (Chapter 21, Tabooed Things). There is a sacrifice in COLD SKIN as per Frazer's system of world myth, as well as an appearance of the ancient cycle of death, fertility and rebirth. In this novel, however, the cycle is more reminiscent of Nieztsche's idea of the Eternal Rerturn where the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur endlessly and infathomably, in the exact same self-similar form. There are also stylistic and thematic allusions to Poe, to Kafka, to H.P. Lovecraft and others

Altogether, COLD SKIN is a stimulating, provocative and unusual work of a fiction that knits together the devices of the gothic, myth and the fable in a headlong adventure story that Mr. Pinol has cunningly crafted to be both compulsively readable and intellectually stimulating.

The "mysterious island" genre has enormous built-in appeal. The unsuspecting arrival, the gradual revelation that something is not right, the full disclosure of the horror -- it's pre-sold. All we ask from the author is competence. And that's what 'Cold Skin' is -- competent.

Pinol depicts a sub-Antarctic island of an almost lunar austerity, with its abandoned cottage, its sterile forest, and that big phallic symbol of a lighthouse throwing its light on an untraveled stretch of cold sea. The nightly attacks of the amphibious Sitauca are relentless, and Pinol does a pretty good job of capturing the embattled atmosphere -- the sleeplessness, the dwindling ammunition, the boredom, the hell of close quarters. The humans' monotony is relieved only by the presence of a captured amphibian, a squaw used only for housework and sex (best sex he's ever had, the narrator tells us). "Our life in the lighthouse is far-fetched." It certainly is.

Of course, the true struggle is with the roommate, the bloodthirsty Austrian, Gruner; he is the real villian of the story, not the "toads." Sometimes I just wish he were more vivid. He carries a terrible stink about him, we're told late in the book, and I wonder why the author didn't mention this earlier -- Gruner's stench should have permeated every page. Pinol is an anthropologist, not primarily a novelist, and so his book often lacks the texture and sense of immersion we expect from a novel. Many parts feel hurried through, and one misses the doggedness of, say, Stanislaw Lem's somewhat similar `Solaris' (where the mysterious island appears as a mysterious space station). Wouldn't the narrator be haunted by his life back home, by his aborted scientific work, even by those drowned Portuguese sailors in the shipwreck just offshore? And, more importantly, don't these guys ever use the bathroom? Sorry, but it's the attention to such mundane details that keeps an author honest. 'Cold Skin' is a brisk 170 pages, and while its abrupt style works well at times, the book often feels as bare and unexplored as its L-shaped island.

I bought Cold Skin when it made Entertainment Weekly's list of best books of the year. I wasn't expecting much from this short tale but boy, was it hard to put down! Pinol's short horror tale has a lot of terror, a great deal of suspense and an incredible main character that is vivid, interesting and very, very peculiar.

When young man arrives to a cold island in the Antartic circle, he is about to embark on a journey he will not soon forget. He is supposed to spend a year on this island, doing weather-related research. But on his very first night on the island, the man is attacked by strange beasts that look like a cross between fish and man.

After surviving the night, he seeks refuge in the island's light tower, which is already inhabited by Gruner, a bitter man who's quietness and moodiness are as devastating as the beasts that attack the island every night. They will forced into a friendship of survival.

Gruner has a slave living with him, one of the creatures that attack them every night. Only this creature is much different than the others. Night after night, they are attacked by the creatures, warned only by the sound of their captive's singing. And as our hero seeks to study and understand the creatures, Gruner only wants to destroy them, a thirst that will soon mark their doom.

Atmospheric and moody doesn't start to describe the tone of this book. Although the book is short, the story is more fleshed-out and complex than most books you will find on the best-seller walls. The characters are fully believable and show exactly the extent of what a person would do were he trapped on an deserted island and facing unforseen cicumstances.

The book is somewhat dampered by a week and yet unavoidable ending. And yet, even that is not enough to ruin this superb gem of a book.

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