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the complete review - fiction

Cold Skin

by
Albert Sánchez Piñol

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : creepy and fairly effective

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Most generally impressed -- good Lovecraft, or Lovecraft-imitation

  From the Reviews:

• "(B)oth a tightly wound thriller and a fantastical horror novel." - Gilbert Cruz, Entertainment Weekly
  
  
• "Indes scheint Sánchez Piñol entschlossen, all das, was etwa bei Lem durch die poetische Kraft der Worte und der Bilder getragen wird, als explizite Thesen zu formulieren -- sehr zum Nachteil seines Romans." - Florian Borchmeyer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "This is an adolescent boys' adventure story, mixing existential angst, sexual fantasy and military action. The resourceful hero digs ditches, fires rifles and uses dynamite against the hordes, described variously as amphibians, fish, reptiles or near-humans. The angst is implicit in the bleakness of the island and, in case we missed it, is underlined by portentous comments" - Michael Eaude, The Independent
  
  
• "Cold Skin is a superbly controlled and creepy little allegorical novel, set on a strangely verdant outcrop of rock somewhere on the edge of the Antarctic circle. (...) With a plot pared down to these extreme basics, and no small amount of gore, Cold Skin seems to resemble a literary equivalent of the low-budget early horror movies of George Romero and Sam Raimi. But its narrator has a lofty, turn-of-the-century turn of phrase, a distinct philosophical bent." - Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday
  
  
• "Erschöpft kehrt der Leser zurück von der Reise an die Grenzen der menschlichen Existenz, und nun fragt er sich, was von der kunstvollen Inszenierung des Katalanen, von diesem kammerspielartigen Albtraum zu halten sei. Die Komposition ? Ist klar, streng, zielgerichtet. Die Sprache ? Knapp und elegant." - Uwe Stolzmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  
  
• "Mr. Pinol's darkly compelling book is recommended to all lovers of uncanny literature, although several of its sentences are more than uncanny" - Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun
  
  
• "Piñol's prose, in Cheryl Leah Morgan's translation from the Catalan, supports the book's gothic conceit with many conscious archaisms, and he sometimes lays it on a bit thick (.....) You feel that neither the narrator, nor the author behind him, are quite sure how to bring things to a close. The ending fizzles out. You finally sympathize with the monsters, who also find frustratingly little to get their teeth into." - Marcel Theroux, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "Playfully conscious of its B-movie plot, Cold Skin avoids the associated pitfalls. The narrator tells his story with detachment as he documents his experiences with the sea fiends. Rather like Lord of the Flies, an archetypal plot is an excuse for an extended meditation on man's propensity for violence." - Tom Williams, The Observer
  
  
• "It's certainly not for everyone, horror never is, especially horror with such an odd sexual element. In this regard, the novel reads like Lovecraft with testosterone. But if weird tales are now and then something to your liking, this novel will run you hot and cold." - Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle
  
  
• "The novel borrows from so many popular genres -- horror, thriller, B-movie -- and yet ultimately transcends them all and is classifiable only as an excellent book." - Simon Baker, The Spectator
  
  
• "The book is an amazingly quick read; which need be no bad thing. Parts of it reminded me of King's Bachman books, in its straightforward set-up and rapid development. There are some clunky moments in the prose, but that may be due to the translation. (...) If you like odd, creepy pulp fiction, you may like Cold Skin, or even think there is more to it than that. Either way, it won't take much of your time to find out." - Andrew McKie, Sunday Telegraph
  
  
• "The elements could hardly be simpler: two men, one castle (the lighthouse), many wild monsters, one tame monster. But, employing these limitations, Sánchez Piñol creates a struggle for survival that is, at the same time, a meditation on humanity. This isn’t horror for horror’s sake. It approaches some kind of archetype -- of isolation, of threat, of melancholy, of the desire for companionship." - Toby Litt, The Times
  
  
• "Cold Skin would appear to be an example of that rare thing: an original story which emerged, immaculately and unexpectedly, from its author's subconscious." - Matthew Tree, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "(W)eil Sanchez Piñol ein effektiver Erzähler mit einer geschickten Kurventechnik ist, saust der Leser ziemlich atemlos dem Ende entgegen und fühlt sich nach dessen Erreichen gewissermaßen glücklich durchgerüttelt." - Merten Worthmann, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Cold Skin is set on a remote island near Antarctica inbetween the World Wars. The narrator has taken a position as a weather official on the island, and begins his story with his trip to and arrival on this desolate place. He's not entirely alone -- there's a lighthouse on the island, and a keeper, Gruner -- but it's probably not a good sign that the man who held the weather official post for the past year is nowhere to be found. (And Gruner also doesn't look too great on their arrival.)
       The isolation of the island is extreme: as Gruner tells the new weather official, it's far off the shipping lanes and they shouldn't expect anyone for a year, until the replacement weather official arrives. The isolation is, however, the least of their problems. As the narrator soon discovers:

     I had been meditating on my reasons for coming to this island. I had been seeking peace in nothingness. And in place of silence I have found a monster-plagued inferno.

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Links:

• Canongate publicity page
• Canongate US publicity page
• Actes Sud publicity page
• S. Fischer publicity page

• Agony Column
• Barcelona Review
• The Believer
• Curled up with a Good Book
• Entertainment Weekly
• Falter (German)
• Farm Lane Books Blog
• Flavorwire
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• Green Man Review
• Historical Novel Society
• Hook my Brain
• The Independent
• Kirkus Reviews
• The New York Sun
• The Observer
• Publishers Weekly
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Sandammeer (German)
• The Scotsman
• The Spectator
• Sunday Telegraph
• Toronto Star
• Vue Weekly
• Die Welt (German)
• Die Zeit (German)

• Official site
• IMDb page

• Pandora in the Congo
• Victus

• See Index of Spanish and Catalan literature
• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers

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About the Author:

       Catalan author Albert Sánchez Piñol was born in 1965.

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© 2006-2018 the complete review

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