Because the surgeons used magazines and popular media for reference and embellished from there, Isserley doesn’t look very human or appealing at all - her breasts are too large, her nose is too small and her eyes couldn’t be made smaller, so she wears fake thick glasses as a distraction. One is that Isserley’s people aren’t very humanoid at all - sheep seem more akin to her - and, in order to do her job of catching healthy males, she was made to look human through still-painful surgery.

You see, Under The Skin has a distinct direction and feel to it, with several points it is trying to make. It’s not very subtle, but manages to be blunt without annoying. Under The Skin appeals to me both for its fantastic protagonist - Isserley, who is more human than she could ever know - as for the themes it brings up: what makes us who we are, how morality clashes with survival, how societal pressure bears down on us all. It begins, tantalisingly, with a woman, Isserley, driving around on the Scottish highways, looking for healthy, muscular young men. I always find it difficult to plug it, because a big part of the attraction is the tension created by not knowing exactly what is going on for a pretty big part of the story. The novel: Under The Skin, by Michel Faber. The topic is quite near-and-dear to me, since its protagonist, Isserley, gave me my online name. So today I thought I would rant talk to you about one of my favorite novels ever, and why I fear the upcoming film adaptation is going to be horrible.

Under the skin isserley