Lost Memory of Skin [Hardcover]

“The Economist” recently published an article about the injustice of the sex registries in the U.S. It describes an incident where a seventeen-year-old girl was challenged to perform oral sex on a 15-year boy in class while everyone else was watching the video. She was caught, charged and convinced to plead guilty and then sentenced to five years probation which meant that she was put on a sex registry for life. A similar situation happens to the Kid in “Lost Memory of Skin” who pleads guilty to statutory rape and put on probation for 10 years and then put on the registry. Now, anyone with the access to the internet can Google his name and discover his criminal background making it nearly impossible to get a job or rent an apartment.
As part of his sentence, the Kid must also wear a tracker on his ankle to ensure that he doesn’t get within 2500 metres of an area where children might congregate. Squatting under a causeway just outside the town of Calusa, Florida becomes the only place he can live without infringing on those terms. For the same reason, many other sex offenders are squatting under that bridge. Nearby residents resent their existence which prompts a police raid during a location election. Shelters are broken as well as men’s bones and the Kid’s pet iguana is shot. So, begins the sad and rather traumatic story of a 22 year-old accused of what many consider the vilest of criminal acts.
An understanding of the dispossessed and alienated was also a challenge Mr. Banks set himself when writing “Affliction” where his protagonist is an abusive man. Even though the Kid’s crimes are more heinous than those of Wade Whitehouse in “Affliction,” he is far more innocent in his intentions and his insights and empathy for others more endearing making him a much more sympathetic protagonist.
The American justice system is a failing institution with its emphasis on punishment and retribution that has only led to the highest level of incarceration in the world and the highest incidence of gun-related deaths in the Western World and one of the highest overall. “Lost Memory of Skin” provides examines the repercussions of that system. The Professor that the Kid meets challenges our ideas of sexual assault and its impact on the accused. The murky source of the Professor's interest in the KId questions our understanding of anyone's motivation in life, including our own. Who should be making judgements of whom or as stated in the bible, "Let he who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone."

I am fascinated by stories that has characters with dark sides, but the types we don't know if we should pity or condemn. Russell did a great job on that with his central character. Reminds me of troubled character of Gavin in Triple Agent Double Cross. How do we judge the weirdos as victims of circumstances or the real perpetrators that their acts depict them to be? This is a brilliantly written book with a classy plot,amazing characterization and narration that makes it he page-turner it is.

Story Description:

The author of Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone and The Sweet Hereafter returns with a very original, riveting mystery about a young outcast, and a contemporary tale of guilt and redemption.

The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion. Suspended in a modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the centre of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to go near where children might gather. He takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.

Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent. Enter the Professor, a university sociologist of enormous size and intellect who finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Banks has long been one of our most acute and insightful novelists. Lost Memory of Skin is a masterful work of fiction that unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical.

My Review:

The Kid strolls into a public library one afternoon and enlists the help of a librarian to look up sex offenders in his area. After typing and clicking for a couple of minutes, a map of his mother's street comes up and along with it a mug shot of the Kid himself. The librarian recognizes him immediately but isn't afraid. However, the Kid is and he beats it out of there and returns to his home under a Florida Causeway with the other sex offenders.

He rides around on a Raleigh three-speed bike that he keeps locked to a pillar when he's not using it. He'd stolen the bike, taken it apart and spray painted it and bought a black carbon steel cable lock for it.

The Kid also has a pet Iguana that he has leashed to a cinder block. His name is "Iggy". When it was young it was only 8 or 10 inches long, bright green and cute. Twelve years later it's the length and weight of a full-grown alligator - six feet head to tail and twenty-seven pounds, but no longer cute. Iggy was the only creature other than himself that he had ever cared for and he decided to care for it the way he wished someone had cared for him - as if the iguana were a human child and he were its parent.

The Kid is a loner and prefers to keep it that way. In his mind he's a one-and-only one of a kind. And even among loners he's unique. Singular.

Local folks don't know him and even if they knew his real name it wouldn't change how they treat him unless they looked it up online which is not something he wants to encourage. Like most of the men living under the Causeway they are legally prohibited from going online. But the Kid can't get away as he has a GPS monitor clamped to his ankle. One of the other guys under the Causeway has a generator and buys fuel for it and runs it every night from seven till eleven and sometimes later depending on business. He has it wired to a twelve-volt outlet surge protector and all the residents pay him a dollar each to recharge their cell phones if they have one and their anklet batteries. If you don't recharge your anklet battery you violate a key term of your parole and you go back to jail.

The Kid's mother's name is Adele but isn't married to his biological father who was a roofer. After he was born his mother had boyfriends pretty constantly who lived in her house with her and the Kid for up to six months on a few occasions but none of them stuck around long enough to claim the Kid as his own or take responsibility for educating or protecting him. Adele needs men to want her but she doesn't want men to need her - not even the Kid. Although she does know that and would deny it if asked. She feels she's done what she can for him and is therefore not responsible for how he turned out.

He visited his mother's house only when she wasn't home and he would gather food supplies, use the toilet, and every few days to shower and do his laundry. Most of the time when he wasn't at school or taking care of Iggy or the two of them were just sitting there staring at each other he watched pornography online and charged it to his mother's visa. He had a full-time job at a lighting store after he graduated right up until he enlisted in the army.

One day the Kid meet the Professor who is studying homelessness and is well-known in the community as an absolute genius. At this point the story takes off in a whole other direction and for me, almost seemed like two different books! It became this convoluted mumbo-jumbo that ruined the entire book. I was deeply disappointed and had a very difficult time finishing. I only finished because by the time the Professor surfaced I'd invested a lot of time in this book. I'm not sure I'd recommend this one to my friends, at least without a warning.