Under the Skin

Under the Skin is a 2000 science fiction novel by Michel Faber. Set on the east coast in northern Scotland, it traces an alien who, manifesting in human form, drives around the countryside picking up male hitchhikers whom she drugs and delivers to her home planet. The novel, which was Faber's debut, was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Award. It was later loosely adapted into a 2013 film of the same name directed by Jonathan Glazer. Summary The protagonist is Isserley, an extraterrestrial sent to Earth by a rich corporation on her planet to kidnap unwary hitchhikers. She drugs them and delivers them to her compatriots, who mutilate and fatten her victims so that they can be turned into meat, as human meat (called ) is a very expensive delicacy on the aliens' barren homeworld. Humans are referred to as Vodsels by the extraterrestrial beings ( means "food" in Dutch). Plot The novel begins with Isserley picking up hitchhikers on the A9 in Scotland. Gradually, it is revealed she is an alien, originally somewhere between a fox and primate in form, who has been surgically altered to look like a human woman, thus suffering constant pains. She takes her job seriously, and considers herself a valuable professional. Isserley has an orderly system for appraising to potentially capture. At the same time, she is spiteful of what she considers her deformed body made so for the job. The only other of her kind to undergo similar surgery to look like Homo sapiens is her direct superior, Esswis. Isserley spends her spare time walking on the pebbled beach by her cottage, marveling at the beauty of Earth compared to her home world, where most beings are forced to live and toil underground, and the wealthy Elite live on the surface, but are still unable to tolerate being outside. Sometimes she admires wandering sheep, as they remind her of children at home and she considers the non-bipeds anthropomorphic, in a sense that they share traits with her own race. Isserley considers herself and her people the "human beings," and the "Homo sapiens" of Earth animals for farming. Amlis Vess, the son of her employer, visits the farm and sets four of their captives free. In response, Isserley and Esswis hunt down and shoot them. Later, when visiting the pens where the captives are fattened, one writes "mercy" in the dirt in front of Isserly and Amlis Vess. Isserley pretends to not speak English, hoping to keep hidden from Vess the extent of their language capabilities.