Slipskin

For readers of Julia Armfield, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Shirley Jackson, this second novel by the bestselling, award-winning author of The Lamb is a wondrously original folktale that intertwines both desire and horror about a trio of outcasts who grasp for love, belonging, and freedom in a crumbling former caravan park by the sea.

Nineteen-year-old Mona lives in a former coastal caravan park turned fishing community called Village. Village is all Mona has ever known—its fishy smell, its sea pregnant with slithering eels, its superstitions—yet she has never quite fit in. Though her Da insists that Village is the last safe place, something rotten seems to be eating away at its core.

When mysterious new neighbor Ingrid arrives with a shaded past and curious motives, Da tells Mona to steer well clear of her. But Mona is undeniably drawn to the alluring stranger and the wriggling eel she keeps on her desk, even if it means being ostracized by her own community and Da.

In decaying caravans with the shades drawn against Village’s prying eyes, Mona surreptitiously becomes entangled in a sexually and emotionally liberating threesome with Ingrid and the rebellious local garbage man, Collin. They form an unlikely, fragile intimacy in which they experience true acceptance and freedom. But the sanctity is shaken as hidden histories from Village surface and Mona is forced to navigate becoming her own person under the watchful eye of her hungry Da.

In luminous prose as poetic as a sea shanty and as biting as an eel, Lucy Rose mesmerizes and horrifies with a story of touch, shame, and the courage to break away.