[DIV]≫ Download Cold Skin Albert Sanchez Pinol Cheryl Leah Morgan Books

Cold Skin Albert Sanchez Pinol Cheryl Leah Morgan Books

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Cold Skin Albert Sanchez Pinol Cheryl Leah Morgan Books

Very creepy novel! Simple 'base under siege' story raised to a higher level by excellent writing and deeper explorations of human interactions and experience. Great read! Very graphic violence and sexuality by the way, but in context perfectly acceptable.


Tags : Amazon.com: Cold Skin (9781841958835): Albert Sanchez Pinol, Cheryl Leah Morgan: Books,Albert Sanchez Pinol, Cheryl Leah Morgan,Cold Skin,Canongate U.S.,1841958832,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Horror,FictionHorror - General,Horror,Horror - General,Horror Fiction,Literary,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Spanish Novel And Short Story

Cold Skin Albert Sanchez Pinol Cheryl Leah Morgan Books Reviews

A disillusioned young man seeks to escape humanity by taking a job as a weather researcher on an island in the Antarctic "at the end of the world, in the middle of nowhere and far from everything." He is alone on the island except for Gruner, an insane, hirsute lighthouse keeper ... and hordes of Lovecraftian fishmen who attack from the sea every nite. The narrator and Gruner form an uneasy, distrustful alliance, strained further by a love triangle centered on Gruner's hot, fish woman lub slave. It's a great premise with great potential that unfortunately Pinol doesn't quite fulfill. Maybe it's a bad translation, but too often the book falls back on stale cliches or, even worse, drops clunkers such as "The thunder pounded like a hammer smashing a thousand-piece dinner service to bits" or "My anatomy lay buried in filth of biblical proportions." These howlers aren't fatal and no worse than what you might find in the average cheezy horror paperback published these days, but I had hoped for better.
It got off to a strong and scary start, but got a little repetitive. The story then started to move along at a slower pace with a few intense moments every now and again. It fell into a predictable story line with a bit of awkwardness attached to it. There was a good idea behind the book, it just wasn't executed as well as I would have liked.
This is a short book, easily read in one sitting.

Summary, no real spoilers

The book tells the tale of a man, who is dropped off at a desolate island near the Antarctic. He is there to replace the old weather official, and serve a one year tour of duty.

Upon arrival, we learn that there is no trace of the old weatherman, and the only man present on the island, a lighthouse keeper, is apparently insane.

When nightfall arrives, we find out why....

This is a very moody, and very strange book. We are never really sure what is real, and what is not, because we are not sure if we can trust our narrator.

This book was originally written in Spanish, and I do think something is lost in the translation. Still, it is an entertaining read.

Recommended for those who enjoy horror, and are looking for an unusual and thoughtful read.
The editorial and reviews have covered the particulars, but they bear re-examination. A bookish young man, desiring to escape from the brutality of humankind in the wake of unspecified wars early in the 20th century (likely World War One), undertakes a peculiar assignment as a weather observer on an obscure and untraveled miniscule island somewhere in the South Atlantic or Antarctic Sea. Some have speculated that the mysteriously disappeared Thompson's Island is meant, but the book locates the tiny (roughly an L-shaped two miles long, by perhaps 3/4th of a mile wide) island 600 leagues southwest of Bouvetoya, which makes it to be somewhere between South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. Wherever it may be located, this island is rarely visited by any ship not expressly headed there---and these are rare. When he arrives on the island, the weatherman's shack is disheveled and deserted so the Captain walks with the unnamed protagonist to the nearby lighthouse, less than a mile away. Here they encounter a stupefied, incoherent brute of a man, who arises from his bunk reluctantly and then refuses to answer any questions, apparently berserk. Sensing something horrific has transpired here, the captain vainly entreats his passenger to return to the ship and to civilization. The young man stays and watches the ship disappear beneath the horizon, wondering what he has gotten himself into. The first night, he discovers the apparent cause of the surly, inexpressive lighthouse keeper's drunken dementia at nightfall, the weather official's frail shack is beset by strange amphibian mutants, who try to get within his shack with apparent murder in mind. He barely manages to fend them off with blows from instruments at hand. The next night he opens the crates left by the captain and finds two rifles and many boxes of cartridges. These he uses to some effect the next night. He is determined to hole up in the lighthouse with the churlish keeper since he realizes that it has been fortified against the ravenous creatures. He hikes once again to the light tower but the keeper shoos him away, threatening to kill him. He establishes that this man, an Austrian named Gruner, keeps a mascot, a female of the half-shark, half-lizard race, to do his domestic chores. He kidnaps the piteous creature and threatens to kill her, thereby gaining entrance to the "fortress". His 12-month sojourn with the keeper and the mascot marks the young man's descent into madness as night after night hordes of the creatures attack and are driven off with pyrotechnics and rifle fire, aided by the redirected rotating beam of the tower lantern. The need to drive off the invading hordes, the terror inspired by the rapidly dwindling cartridge supply, certainty of annihilation by the monsters, and sexual trysts with the female "monster"--whom he has discovered to offer carnal pleasure to the bestial keeper as well--accelerate his own descent into the same frenzied madness he once reviled in the keeper. Not wishing to spoil the ending for the reader, I will only say that it is at first reading very vague, incomplete and incomprehensible. But upon re-reading the book, and reflecting one may grasp how the young meteorologist has struggled to understand and befriend the "monsters", whom he recognizes as merely defending their own turf against rapacious human invaders. Reason and compassion, even to those he once misconstrued merely to be man-eating beasts, struggle with vengeful fury to destroy those who might destroy him. As to whether he succeeds in gaining the trust of the creatures, who he finds call themselves "Sitauca", or must resume battle, is left unanswered and, after reading the last page, each reader may draw his or her own conclusions as to how this saga might end. Perhaps a key to the enigma can be found in the title of a book the protagonist finds in the lighthouse the first night-- Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH. He tries to engage the taciturn and beast-like Gruner in a discussion of the book, only to be fobbed off with the curt "The book isn't mine". The book is mentioned several times in the narrative, and in hindsight, its examination of birth, death and rebirth cycle myths in all religions up through Christianity may hold the key to one's interpretation of the ending and what may lie in store for the weather official. The saving grace of the innocence of children--of all species--and their uncomprehending primeval curiosity about alien beings, no matter how oddly shaped in contrast to themselves, is another consideration that may help to imagine the possible fate of the disillusioned scientist.

Very thought-provoking and haunting. No mere Gothic monster horror story, though it works on that level as well. I will be interested to see the cinematic version, now "in pre-production", tentatively due out in 2014.
I bought it in the strength of the movie version. The book is different in several ways, but better in most cases. And the movie was good. The drift between prose and journal can be a bit jarring, but it's manageable. Soundly written.
Very creepy novel! Simple 'base under siege' story raised to a higher level by excellent writing and deeper explorations of human interactions and experience. Great read! Very graphic violence and sexuality by the way, but in context perfectly acceptable.