Mysterious Skin [Paperback]

The book's complex narrative takes us through the minds of various characters (the novel is told in first person, using different characters to tell different parts of the story). The story starts when Brian and Neil are young boys. Although they are on the same baseball team, they do not know each other. Something happens to them that will mark them forever.

They both find different ways to deal with the event that left them mentally scarred. Many years later, Brian is certain that his blackouts and frequent nose bleeds can only be attributed to the fact that he was abducted by aliens. But as he grows older, the horrible truth slowly reveals itself to him and he quickly realizes that he needs to find Neil in order to put it all behind him.

Neil, on his part, deals with his past in a very different way. Working as an escort, Neil doesn't always know what he wants. He is a very reluctant character in that he thinks he knows who he is what he wants when, in fact, he's a complete stranger to himself. The only way he can find to deal with everything life hands him is through his body and his sexuality.

Offering very complex characters with even more complicated lives, Mysterious Skin is a powerful read that you won't be able to put down. The pain these characters feel just oozes off the page, affecting the reader in various ways. Just wait until Neil and Brian finally meet. Their confrontation is completely heartbreaking. It's almost impossible not to feel for these characters, almost impossible not to sympathize and empathize with them.

Mysterious Skin was Scott Heim's first novel. I can't wait to discover more from this writer. Mysterious Skin really left an impression on me. Highly recommended.

"Mysterious Skin" involves two seemingly unrelated plots: one about Brian, a boy who can't remember a five-hour period of his life; and the other about Neil, a boy who realized at a very young age his attraction to other men and took advantage of it when his Little League coach stole his sexual innocence. Brian grows up gradually remembering bits and pieces of the night he awoke in his crawlspace dirty and bleeding, and even begins to suspect that he was the victim of an alien abduction. Neil grows up to be a teenage hustler, cruising parks and gay bars for older men to scam, never able to push away his desire for more mature lovers after the incidents with his coach.

The two stories flow separately through most of the book and come together toward the end. The combined tale that they tell is both heartbreakingly poignant and downright disturbing.

The author walks on extremely dangerous ground throughout most of "Mysterious Skin." He deals with difficult and controversial material, especially in the beginning. The scenes he writes are graphic, and it would be very easy to toss the book aside out of disgust. But these scenes are necessary, and the author knows it. The graphically described scenes of sexual relations are necessary to make us feel for the characters and to understand them. What could easily be trashy becomes beautiful when you realize why it is there.

"Mysterious Skin" is an emotion-filled, poignant work. It had a sort of power over me to make me care for the characters it introduced, and still does have that power as I find myself thinking about Neil and Brian every so often... as if they were my friends. And that is a remarkable accomplishment.