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“It’s hard to think of you as anything other than an egg.”
I’m quite a tactile person. There’s something pleasant about being close to the people you love, and while these days many of my communications with my friends take place via screens, I’m always keen to be able to see them in the flesh again. There is often talk that people are retreating behind their devices, hiding themselves away privately and not wanting to interact with one another in “the real world”. This is nonsense. People, as a general rule, like being with other people. But what if we couldn’t be with other people anymore? What if it was illegal?
Skin opens five years after a pandemic that saw a curious virus sweep the globe and take out most of the population. While the causes were confused at first, it turns out that the virus rendered humans allergic to one another. Standing next to another person could be fatal, a “kiss of death” no longer a metaphorical term. The survivors have now retreated to their homes and apartments, and even families no longer see one another, instead spending their days in individual rooms, only communicating via phones and computers. In some ways, nothing at all has changed.
Angela Allen is struggling with the new world. Distanced from her husband and two children, all of whom become more and more like strangers every day, her sole distraction is her fortnightly jaunts out into the abandoned streets as part of a neighbourhood watch scheme. As long as she keeps to the path and wears her hazmat suit at all times, nothing can go wrong. That is, until on one of her trips she sees a strange man walking through town. She doesn’t know him, but she does know that the fact he’s not wearing so much as a face mask is strange. Is he immune, or insane? Driven on by curiosity, Angela tries to communicate with him and in doing so threatens whatever stability remained in her life as everything she knew is fundamentally rewritten.
Like all the most chilling dystopian visions in fiction, this one is centred around something that humanity can’t control. It’s not a climate disaster, or a political situation, but rather a disease for which there’s no cure. While the cynicism abounds that the future of sitting at home in front of a screen is what humanity has made for themselves anyway, Angela’s frustration and longing to leave is well displayed. If anything, she still seems too calm. After being in this situation for five years, perhaps everyone has just got used to it now and takes it in their stride. Had we joined the story after a year, things might have been very different.
The main plot is interspersed with what happened to Angela and her family in the immediate aftermath, showing them escaping the city and trying to survive. Here, the family learn who they really are when the chips are down, and they don’t necessarily like what they see. I’m always a bit fascinated by how quickly people lose their humanity in situations like this, and I hope that we never have to find out for real as I don’t think the results would be particularly pretty.
Unfortunately, as the book draws to a conclusion, it leaves us with too many unanswered questions to be entirely satisfying. I’m someone who enjoys an open-ended book, as endings are often a bit too artificial, but here we’re left with no resolution on much of anything. Sure, this is fitting in some ways, as Angela isn’t going to be told what’s happened to the other characters given the nature of her world, but as a reader it feels a bit disappointing. The final reveal as well, which we realise was seeded a long time ago and quite cleverly too, is somewhat depressing as well and a little contrived, and you get the impression that whatever happens next, it won’t be good for anyone involved.
My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!
