What do you think?
Rate this book
The Skin Beneath
Five years ago, Sam O'Connor's sister Chloe died in New York — just another accidental overdose at the Chelsea Hotel ... Now, someone has sent Sam a postcard telling her Chloe's death was no accident. She died of a gunshot wound, not an overdose, while she was investigating a political conspiracy. 'Coincidence?' the postcard reads, 'Think about it ...' Sam tries not to think about it, but she has to find out why Chloe died. Every answer produces more questions as Sam steps into Chloe's life, retracing her last days in Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, and New York. Along the way, Sam falls for the beautiful but troubled Romey, Chloe's last roommate, who knows far more than she's willing to tell. As Sam navigates the twisted trail between fact and fantasy, she is forced to confront some difficult truths about her sister and, more frightening, about herself.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
3 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Nairne Holtz
8 books22 followersI began my writing career in the early 90s with the creation of a pansexual queer porn zine, Pornorama, which generated reviews and sales from around the world. Today, I manage a law library in Toronto and am the author of several works of fiction. The Skin Beneath (Insomniac, 2007), was shortlisted for Quebec’s McAuslan Prize and This One’s Going to Last Forever (Insomniac, 2009), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. My newest novel, Femme Confidential, was released in November of 2017. For more information about my work and my projects, go to www.femmeconfidential.com
One of my projects is reviewing books on GoodReads. I have created lists of (and am slowly adding reviews to) my favourite novels by and about queer women. These diverse novels span the globe (I include novels in translation) and the decades. They range from award-winning literature with superb writing to well executed genre fiction to decidedly indie fare that won't appeal to a wide audience. I do, of course, have my biases, such as intelligent humour and character-driven novels.
I read all the time. I could try and impress you with how much I’ve read (like an absurd amount) or my good taste but what I want to do here is: a) help queer women of all ages find great (or fun or interesting) books about their lives; and b) give a shout-out to queer women writers, especially authors that aren’t well known.
One of my projects is reviewing books on GoodReads. I have created lists of (and am slowly adding reviews to) my favourite novels by and about queer women. These diverse novels span the globe (I include novels in translation) and the decades. They range from award-winning literature with superb writing to well executed genre fiction to decidedly indie fare that won't appeal to a wide audience. I do, of course, have my biases, such as intelligent humour and character-driven novels.
I read all the time. I could try and impress you with how much I’ve read (like an absurd amount) or my good taste but what I want to do here is: a) help queer women of all ages find great (or fun or interesting) books about their lives; and b) give a shout-out to queer women writers, especially authors that aren’t well known.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 1, 2010
This accomplished first novel by a bibliographer of Canadian lesbian fiction is classified by the publisher as a “lesbian mystery.” However, it could as well be described as a black comedy of manners, a road-trip novel, a study of grief in various forms, a realistic lesbian love story, or a novel of development. The central character, Sam (for Samantha), is moved to investigate the life of her deceased sister Chloe when she gets an anonymous note suggesting that Chloe’s death in a legendary hangout for bohemians in New York was not an accident (from a drug overdose), as she had been told.
As in other novels featuring two siblings, Sam and Chloe display contrasting traits in adulthood that were foreshadowed in their insular childhood. Chloe, six years older than Sam, was always heterosexual if never exactly “straight.” In shared games, Chloe usually assigned Sam the less desirable role of “the boy.” Sam has grown up butch and queer.
The narrative style is as coolly understated as Sam’s stream of consciousness but expressed in a distancing third-person voice. Current events are told in the present tense, interspersed with flashbacks in the past tense. The reader learns that Chloe and Sam were raised by their academic father, who quietly acquired a male lover after expelling the girls’ suicidal mother from their home. In some sense Chloe played the role of mother to Sam, and her absence still leaves a huge gap in Sam’s life. When Sam and her father converse, he discusses “his and Steven’s consumer choices: what downtown restaurant they tried... and what new pottery they bought.” Sam has been raised in an atmosphere of subtle dishonesty that maintains a strict silence on all matters emotional.
Sam is described as a much-tattooed slacker of the 1990’s who takes university courses but never gets a degree. She acquires a mission in life when she moves from Toronto to Montreal to discover what she can about her sister’s life there. There she’s relieved to find a job as dishwasher in the Montreal restaurant where Chloe once worked. Sam’s chronic unemployment is due in part to her androgynous image, which makes her ineligible for the kind of “display jobs” (receptionist, waitress, salesperson, stripper) that are usually available to young women with few specific skills. The restaurant, Le Lapin Blanc (The White Rabbit) is the opening through which Sam enters a surrealistic underworld to rival that of Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Indeed, references to the “Alice” books recur throughout the novel.
Sam is aware that Chloe had been influenced by the socio-political theories of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, whose work she had discovered in university. She also knows that Chloe was fascinated by conspiracy theories. Sam eventually discovers an article co-written by Chloe, like a letter from the grave, outlining a conspiracy that links illegal weapons, the CIA, the Hell’s Angels, and the Raelian cult with recent U.S. military interventions in the Middle East. The novel’s title, “The Skin Beneath,” refers to the “Ecdysis Conspiracy” (possibly named by Chloe herself), which in turn refers to the natural process by which snakes shed their outer skins to reveal new skin beneath. The truth is similarly shown to be provisional and multi-layered.
As Sam meets the motley crew of who knew Chloe in her last few years, a cavalcade of representative social types, she follows the trail of clues to Detroit and to her sister’s terminus at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sam’s objectivity on this journey is compromised by her sexual attraction to two feminine women who return her lust, but who both seem untrustworthy in different ways. In the end, Holtz’s story of urban life in the 90’s is shown to be in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale, “The Purloined Letter,” in which the most important piece of evidence is hidden in plain sight.
Holtz evokes particular places and subcultures with impressive accuracy, yet the essential plot seems timeless. Chloe’s emerging life story is heartbreaking, and Sam’s sense of sharing in the guilt of all those who hurt Chloe seems justified, yet guilt is shown to be useless when it involves making amends with someone who’s dead. By the end of the story, the mystery of Chloe’s death is resolved in a way that both is and is not “camp,” and a sequence of apparently unrelated events and characters comes together in a way that is satisfyingly coherent.
---------
As in other novels featuring two siblings, Sam and Chloe display contrasting traits in adulthood that were foreshadowed in their insular childhood. Chloe, six years older than Sam, was always heterosexual if never exactly “straight.” In shared games, Chloe usually assigned Sam the less desirable role of “the boy.” Sam has grown up butch and queer.
The narrative style is as coolly understated as Sam’s stream of consciousness but expressed in a distancing third-person voice. Current events are told in the present tense, interspersed with flashbacks in the past tense. The reader learns that Chloe and Sam were raised by their academic father, who quietly acquired a male lover after expelling the girls’ suicidal mother from their home. In some sense Chloe played the role of mother to Sam, and her absence still leaves a huge gap in Sam’s life. When Sam and her father converse, he discusses “his and Steven’s consumer choices: what downtown restaurant they tried... and what new pottery they bought.” Sam has been raised in an atmosphere of subtle dishonesty that maintains a strict silence on all matters emotional.
Sam is described as a much-tattooed slacker of the 1990’s who takes university courses but never gets a degree. She acquires a mission in life when she moves from Toronto to Montreal to discover what she can about her sister’s life there. There she’s relieved to find a job as dishwasher in the Montreal restaurant where Chloe once worked. Sam’s chronic unemployment is due in part to her androgynous image, which makes her ineligible for the kind of “display jobs” (receptionist, waitress, salesperson, stripper) that are usually available to young women with few specific skills. The restaurant, Le Lapin Blanc (The White Rabbit) is the opening through which Sam enters a surrealistic underworld to rival that of Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Indeed, references to the “Alice” books recur throughout the novel.
Sam is aware that Chloe had been influenced by the socio-political theories of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, whose work she had discovered in university. She also knows that Chloe was fascinated by conspiracy theories. Sam eventually discovers an article co-written by Chloe, like a letter from the grave, outlining a conspiracy that links illegal weapons, the CIA, the Hell’s Angels, and the Raelian cult with recent U.S. military interventions in the Middle East. The novel’s title, “The Skin Beneath,” refers to the “Ecdysis Conspiracy” (possibly named by Chloe herself), which in turn refers to the natural process by which snakes shed their outer skins to reveal new skin beneath. The truth is similarly shown to be provisional and multi-layered.
As Sam meets the motley crew of who knew Chloe in her last few years, a cavalcade of representative social types, she follows the trail of clues to Detroit and to her sister’s terminus at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sam’s objectivity on this journey is compromised by her sexual attraction to two feminine women who return her lust, but who both seem untrustworthy in different ways. In the end, Holtz’s story of urban life in the 90’s is shown to be in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale, “The Purloined Letter,” in which the most important piece of evidence is hidden in plain sight.
Holtz evokes particular places and subcultures with impressive accuracy, yet the essential plot seems timeless. Chloe’s emerging life story is heartbreaking, and Sam’s sense of sharing in the guilt of all those who hurt Chloe seems justified, yet guilt is shown to be useless when it involves making amends with someone who’s dead. By the end of the story, the mystery of Chloe’s death is resolved in a way that both is and is not “camp,” and a sequence of apparently unrelated events and characters comes together in a way that is satisfyingly coherent.
---------
July 31, 2009
The first half of this book reminded me a lot of Delible also by Insomniac Press. The age of Kurt Cobain, Canadian punk and a girl's love and frustration with her sister.
It's a very quick read and falls somewhere between murder mystery and literature, not really nailing either genre. There is a lot of intelligence in Holtz's writing but I'm not sure the book's story is weighty enough to carry some of her ideas and themes. The running idea of ecdysis (shedding a skin) to partially reveal hidden truths seems to falter near the end, providing a too neat excuse to not have answers to the character questions raised throughout the book.
I'd be interested to see what Holtz's next book is like.
It's a very quick read and falls somewhere between murder mystery and literature, not really nailing either genre. There is a lot of intelligence in Holtz's writing but I'm not sure the book's story is weighty enough to carry some of her ideas and themes. The running idea of ecdysis (shedding a skin) to partially reveal hidden truths seems to falter near the end, providing a too neat excuse to not have answers to the character questions raised throughout the book.
I'd be interested to see what Holtz's next book is like.
January 19, 2008
Quirky lesbian coming of age novel with a unique voice and unforgettable characters.
October 20, 2019
This held my attention just enough to keep me reading, though I found it curiously uninvolving. The MacGuffin is a conspiracy theory, and the plot kaleidoscopes (a good simile used in the narrative) into the shape of a conspiracy and then resolves anticlimactically, but with corroboration that something conspiratorial is happening... I would have enjoyed it more if a friend hadn’t worn me out on conspiracy theories years ago. This kind of plotting takes a lot of attention to detail, so props to the author for that.
It makes a nice travelogue; I picked it up in a used bookstore in Verdun so that was the hook for me. The book is basically about someone who never really gets close enough to the people in her life but eventually gets to know herself.
It makes a nice travelogue; I picked it up in a used bookstore in Verdun so that was the hook for me. The book is basically about someone who never really gets close enough to the people in her life but eventually gets to know herself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 11, 2025
I followed this story just to get to a conclusion. It took a long round about way to get somewhere.
June 22, 2008
Although this is billed as a lesbian mystery, it really doesn’t fit that genre – it fits more comfortably as literature, Canadian Literature to be exact. This is a well-written and intriguing book that takes a bit more thought than most of the books that I have been reading recently. The story follows Sam, a young woman who seems rather at loose ends until she receives a postcard suggesting that her sister (Choe)’s death was not a suicide. She leaves her life in Toronto and moves to Montreal to trace her sister’s life, finding a job where her sister used to work and contacting her sister’s friends and beginning a relationship with her sister’s ex roommate. The two sisters are as different as could be, but Sam’s idolization of Chloe results in her identity being caught up in her sister’s. As the story progresses, she learns more about her sister’s last few years and in doing so learns more about herself.
Overall, I found this to be an interesting read. The characters were quite fascinating and multi-facteted. No one was what they necessarily appeared to be at first – there were no heroes of villains, everyone was painfully human and realistically portrayed. The narrative style is a bit jarring at first – the story is told third person, present tense. It is an effective style – dragging the reader into the story, but I’m not sure why Holtz set the story in the 90s if she was planning on using present tense. Regardless, it is an effective style, albeit a bit jarring at first and she does alternate with flashback chapters told in past tense which makes it a bit less daunting. Stylistically, this is a wonderfully crafted book and it was a welcome departure from the fluffy lesbian themed books and the other spec fic books that I’ve been reading.
Overall, I found this to be an interesting read. The characters were quite fascinating and multi-facteted. No one was what they necessarily appeared to be at first – there were no heroes of villains, everyone was painfully human and realistically portrayed. The narrative style is a bit jarring at first – the story is told third person, present tense. It is an effective style – dragging the reader into the story, but I’m not sure why Holtz set the story in the 90s if she was planning on using present tense. Regardless, it is an effective style, albeit a bit jarring at first and she does alternate with flashback chapters told in past tense which makes it a bit less daunting. Stylistically, this is a wonderfully crafted book and it was a welcome departure from the fluffy lesbian themed books and the other spec fic books that I’ve been reading.
August 11, 2011
I reviewed this book for the Lesbrary. You can read the complete review at http://lesbrary.wordpress.com
Here's a snippet:
I cannot adequately explain the joy, the incredible sense of pleasure, I derived from reading this book. Even as the book’s plot unraveled a bit at the end, I enjoyed every moment of reading Nairne Holtz’s Skin Beneath. The first paragraph:
What an opening, right? First, the sentence is not a fluke– the entire novel occurs in present tense. Which is just… amazing. In a lesser writer’s hands, it could have come across as gimmicky, or even intrusive. It was a little mesmerizing, instead, to experience the events of a book at the same time as the protagonist. And secondly, the subject matter! A dead sister! A conspiracy! Holtz not only writes well, she also imagines a great plot.
Here's a snippet:
I cannot adequately explain the joy, the incredible sense of pleasure, I derived from reading this book. Even as the book’s plot unraveled a bit at the end, I enjoyed every moment of reading Nairne Holtz’s Skin Beneath. The first paragraph:
Sam unlocks the mailbox in the lobby of her building, takes out a single envelope, opens the back flap to discover a postcard inside. She reads the words on the postcard: “Your sister died while investigating a political conspiracy. Coincidence? How often do women kill themselves with a gun? Think about it.”
What an opening, right? First, the sentence is not a fluke– the entire novel occurs in present tense. Which is just… amazing. In a lesser writer’s hands, it could have come across as gimmicky, or even intrusive. It was a little mesmerizing, instead, to experience the events of a book at the same time as the protagonist. And secondly, the subject matter! A dead sister! A conspiracy! Holtz not only writes well, she also imagines a great plot.
Read
June 27, 2013I really enjoyed this book.
April 2, 2015
I think this book is more of a fiction book with the main character trying to solve the issue of her sister's death.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews