In this essay, I am interested in Under the Skin in the context of the question of what role literature can play in extending our understanding of the relation between the human and nonhuman animal. In the introduction to Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (2003), Cary Wolfe observes that

Florian Auerochs, "Planetarisch, dysphorisch, nonhuman: Michel Faber's 'Weltenwanderin' in Jonathan Glazer's UNDER THE SKIN." In: Jörn Glasenapp (Hg.), Weltliteratur des Kinos. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-7705-6050-9, pp.263–288. (in German) Gant, Charles (19 March 2014). "Need for Speed in pole position at UK box office but Under the Skin infectious | Film". The Guardian . Retrieved 14 April 2014. With each male specimen who steps into the passenger seat of her little overheated car, Faber adds another piece to the puzzle of this alien kerb-crawler. There is something strange about her legs; her grasp of the world around her is patchy, yet occasionally her insights into the banal are so beautiful that they bring up you short. Notwithstanding the clever characterisation, the real triumph is Faber’s restrained, almost opaque prose. This is a man who could give Conrad a run at writing the perfect sentence. It seems there's a doubt about writing which is really central to The Book of Strange New Things. All the letter writing, the focus on the bible. All the time, we're reminded that Peter is best just speaking, being with someone physically, otherwise the distance gets too much. Do you doubt the power of the written word to bridge the gaps between people ?Confirming the text’s interest in the idea of metamorphosis, this encounter explicitly recalls Book I of Ovid’s great poem of that title in which the beautiful Io is transformed into a white heifer by Jupiter in an attempt to hide his rape of her. Although, due to her species metamorphosis, Io can no longer speak, like the vodsel in the pen she retains her command over language and reveals her true identity to her father by tracing letters in the ground: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1976. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum, 2004. Wilson remembers conversations with Glazer in Scotland when the director was chasing pure realism. Filming, Wilson argued, itself made things unreal. "And these talks we'd have became very philosophical. I found them fascinating. But I think they only interested Jon up to a point."

Interview phobia aside, Glazer is affable and open. He has the fractionally dazed air of a rescued castaway. "I'm a bit bereft without the film. It's like falling in love. You think, what do I love? I love this." He puffs on an electronic cigarette. The boos don't matter: "Some people love it, some are repulsed. Fair enough." We talk about literary adaptations. "I don't think I'm the right man to adapt a book," he says.Wiseman, Andreas (24 March 2014). "Under The Skin: at any cost | Screen". Screen Daily . Retrieved 14 April 2014. Xan Brooks of The Guardian gave Under the Skin five out of five and called it "far and away the best picture" to play at the Venice Film Festival. [52] Peter Bradshaw, also of The Guardian, described the film as "visually stunning and deeply disturbing" and also awarded it five out of five. [53] Robbie Collin of The Telegraph wrote: "If my legs hadn't been so wobbly and my mouth so dry, I would have climbed up on my seat and cheered." [54] Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four, describing it as "hideously beautiful ... its life force is overwhelming." [55] Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four, stating: "This is what we talk about when we talk about film as art." [56] Christy Lemire also gave the film four out of four, calling it an "undeniably haunting, singular experience" and naming it one of the best films of 2014. [57] Andrew Lowry of Total Film, Dave Calhoun of Time Out London, Kate Muir of The Times, and Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph all gave the film five out of five. [58] [59] [60] [54] Seeing 'Under the Skin', much of it was very impressive. Can totally see why people disliked it, do share a few of the complaints myself, but can see even more why critics and many others loved it. Will not resort to the oh so common, overused and abused stereotypical phrases always spouted on people's tastes on both sides, wanting to be a fair and perceptive reviewer and not someone who thinks only their opinion is right and nobody else's is (seen a lot around here). This is not a becoming-animal—since Deleuze and Guattari insist that that is real and does not take place in dreams—but a dream metamorphosis that echoes, shadows, or parallels the real becoming-animal. Although Isserley attempts to reason herself out of her concern for the dog, it seems that—now her consciousness has been opened up to becoming-animal, to existing in relationality with the animal-other—this extends to the entire animal world, not just the vodsels. She is fearful, for instance, of polluting the loch in which she bathes with shampoo, evidencing an empathetic concern for “the things” that live in it (287). She even considers rescuing Pennington Studios from the steading, “but of course it was too late. Pennington would have had his tongue and balls removed last night. He hadn’t much wanted to live anyway, and he was hardly likely to have changed his mind by now. He was better left alone” (279).

A similar readerly experience is caused by another contemporary British sf novel marketed as a mainstream text, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005). The narrative technique of secretion identified here might also usefully describe the “told and not told” (Ishiguro 79, 81) dynamic at play in the revelation of information to the reader, and to Kathy H and the other Hailsham students, in Ishiguro’s text. In the Scottish Highlands, the woman abandons the van in the fog. She walks to a restaurant and attempts to eat cake, but retches and spits it out. In a bus, she meets a man who offers to help her. At his house, he prepares a meal for her and they watch television. Alone in her room, she examines her body in a mirror. They visit a ruined castle, where the man carries her over a puddle and helps her down some steps. At his house, they kiss and begin to have sex, but the woman stops and examines her genitals. Director Jonathan Glazer decided to adapt Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin (2000) after finishing his debut film Sexy Beast (2000), but work did not begin until he had finished his second film, Birth (2004). [17] Glazer's producer James Wilson sent him a script that closely adapted the novel; Glazer admired the script but had no interest in filming it, saying: "I knew then that I absolutely didn't want to film the book. But I still wanted to make the book a film." [17] Pulver, Andrew. "Venice 2013: Under the Skin heads triple bill of long-awaited films". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 21 August 2014. Of course the events of yesterday … or was it the day before?... She wasn’t exactly sure how long she had spent on the jetty afterwards … but anyway, those events … well, they had upset her, there was no denying that. But it was all in the past now. Water under the bridge, as the vodsels … as she’d heard said. (207; emphasis in original)

Michel Faber

On the other hand, I do get fed up when an interviewer engages me in literary conversation only to publish a predominantly personal piece. I felt embarrassed recently when someone from The Observer interviewed David Mitchell and me together. David has very interesting things to say about the process of writing; he's a very thoughtful and insightful man. But when the feature was published, its focus was very much on the "human interest" angle of me and my loss of Eva. A missed opportunity, I felt. Michel Faber (born 13 April 1960) is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White. His novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, was published in 2020. His book, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, a non-fiction work about music, came out in October 2023.