“Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country.”
—Cornel West
“Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks.”
—New York Times
Lost Memory of Skin is a provocative novel of spiritual and moral redemption from Russell Banks, the author of Affliction, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and other acclaimed masterworks of contemporary American fiction. Uncompromising and complex, Lost Memory of Skin is the story of The Kid, a young sex offender recently released from prison and forced to live beneath a South Florida causeway. When The Professor, a man of enormous intellect and appetite, takes The Kid under his wing, his own startling past will cause upheavals in both of their worlds. At once lyrical, witty, and disturbing, Banks’s extraordinary novel showcases his abilities as a world-class storyteller as well as his incisive understanding of the dangerous contradictions and hypocrisies of modern American society.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable results
Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders.
Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor’s motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man.
When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor’s past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men’s relationship shifts.
Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.
Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore.
The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 5.25
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. First Edition. Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # BK1281
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 1.45. Seller Inventory # 0061857637-2-1
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 1.45. Seller Inventory # 353-0061857637-new
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience. Seller Inventory # GoldenDragon0061857637
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0061857637
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0061857637
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. Pristine copy in mylar-protected dj. Signed and dated on special, publisher's edition page bound in preceding the half-title page. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 000482
Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0061857637
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. First edition. First printing. Hardbound. New/New. A pristine unread copy. Smoke-free shop. Shipped in well padded box. This book has no defects (no bruises, clips, marks, etc.). Comes with mylar dust jacket protector. Purchased new and never opened, except for signing. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on a specially-bound page, as marked SIGNED FIRST EDITION by the publisher, one of an unknown number of such copies, but probably 500 or less. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 02-2013-18
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0061857637