Under the Skin

I am stuck between dying to discuss this book with someone and wishing I never read it. I devoured this book in one sitting sometime last week, and I still wake up in the middle of the night struck by a particularly gruesome or melancholy passage that has burrowed into my brain. The back of the book doesn't give much away, but the bare-bones explanation intrigued me. A woman picks up hitchhikers and has meaningful conversations with them about life, the universe, and everything, that is really all the author wants us to know before delving into the meat of the story. There are passages that made me squirm and put me off my lunch, but what makes this book so beautiful are the subtleties. Once the overarching message of the plot is revealed it is a bit eye-rolling taken at face value, but because the plot unfolds through the eyes of our long-suffering protagonist (I use that term loosely, I found it extremely difficult to sympathize with her) and her perspective is skewed by the torments she has endured, there are moments when her heinous behavior is almost justified. But that is really the point, we all justify cruelty on a daily basis for the sake of profit and convenience