Skin By Kathe Koja

Book Review Skin by Kathe Koja – A Visceral Tale of Art, Madness, and Human Nature

It knows how to toy with you and portray an image of perversion, but because you often take some time to acclimatise to the images and worlds she’s creating, no matter how alluring they are, it begs the question of how well you’re able to invest since by the end you wonder whether you’ve missed the point.

The Heart and Soul of Horror Review Websites. Skin by Kathe Koja – A Visceral Tale of Art, Madness, and Human Nature

‘Skin’ is a brilliant, if quite impenetrable tale. The new edition with Eric LaRocca’s introduction adds a nice flourish, and in the echelons of fiction it’s clear why Kathe Koja’s fiction still stands out, possessing the organic vigour which makes her work hard to put down. And while it might take you a bit longer to get into this one than, for instance, ‘The Cipher’, the complexity it wields both like a chisel and a scalpel to carve the prose out works tremendously.

Tess and Bibi are artists of a kind, their various predilections scaring some off and enticing others, the art they create becoming an entity in and of itself. Of course, art has extremes, and Tess and Bibi’s individual vices bring those out all too clearly – the result of which is a downward spiral towards something very visceral and sinister indeed.

The first thing to note is Koja’s prose, an instant stand-out among any of her works. The stream-of-consciousness she injects into her work both disorientates and allures, and if you want a style that almost by its very nature goes in directions you don’t expect, you’d be hard-pressed for a better option. Bibi and Tess haven’t lost any of their flair since the book’s first publication in 1993, and in fact her whole style of writing has remained infuriatingly unique, as have her creations.

It’s tempting to draw parallels between ‘Skin’ and the works of Clive Barker, since how their character become fully-fleshed and interact have a similarly cerebral energy; with Koja however, the ambiguity is what punches you on the nose with all the understatement of brutalist architecture. So many of her character illicit gut reactions from you and guide you in specific directions, so when the humourless and fresh angles begin to emerge, you don’t know where you stand and that feels wonderful.

The narrative itself possesses an excruciatingly Cronenbergian quality. Never less than visceral, it’s both philosophical and innately human, managing to create suspense both deliberately and in spite of some of its elements. There’s an unnerving inkling that her narratives are building to a bigger organism which splits off into little amoebas that chip away at your resolve at precisely the right moment – and if there’s one downside to ‘Skin’, it’s this very same thing.

It knows how to toy with you and portray an image of perversion, but because you often take some time to acclimatise to the images and worlds she’s creating, no matter how alluring they are, it begs the question of how well you’re able to invest since by the end you wonder whether you’ve missed the point.

Overall though, it’s never short of compelling, the call of the void is at its most erotic and destructively liminal here, and actually (and this is my third time reading this novel) perhaps its most undistilled charm is how much more you see with every re-read. That first read might be a little underwhelming or confusing, but the next will open a gateway to a pocket of reality and not rest until it has dragged you in. Not the finest Koja tale to exist – that honour still goes to her debut, ‘The Cipher’ – but it remains as perverse and as unique as anything she’s written.

Thirty years ago, SKIN changed the landscape of dark fiction forever. And now this classic of queer body horror is back in print, with a brand new introduction from Eric LaRocca

Tess burns. Bibi cuts. Together they create chaos, love, pain, and unstoppable art, in SKIN, the story of a partnership that sparks like flying metal and bleeds like a breaking heart. metal. Bibi molds flesh. Together, they make art that moves,
dances, burns, and bleeds, and the Surgeons of the Demolition become the
hottest ticket in town. But Bibi wants more, always more, no matter who gets
hurt. And Tess needs to burn, no matter what.

Thirty years ago, SKIN changed the landscape of dark fiction forever. And now the girls are back in town.

Praise for Skin

“This vivid tale of tortured human souls reads like a piece of performance art … Highly unsettling and extremely satisfying. Sit back and experience it.”
—Library Journal (2025)

“SKIN is one of one. A classic of American horror so unquestionably of its time but also timeless. It reads as if it wasn’t written in ink but in melted ferrous that burns a hole in your soul. It is an industrial baroque masterpiece.”
—S.A. Cosby, author of All the Sinners Bleed

“Don’t let the title fool you—Skin has many layers of flesh to bare. An intoxicating, provocative dance of art and artist. Koja’s vision is unmatched.”
—Hailey Piper, author of A Game in Yellow

“Skin is a deadly performance in silence and scream . . . Each page is white hot and fluid, ductile and distorting, a fierce sense of dark metal energy. No one is safe.”
—Eugen Bacon, British Fantasy Award winner and Philip K. Dick Award finalist

“A dark and frightening work by a major talent whose prose reads like a
collaboration between Clive Barker and William S. Burroughs. Highly
recommended.”
—Library Journal (1993)

“Torqued! Twisted, man, as the new Abyss line plunges forward with its plan to advance through the frontiers of psychological horror. Koja fulfills Abyss’s hopes with a savage hymn to industrial culture. … A strong stylist, Koja makes white-hot the pains of metal sculpting and draws a big picture of S&M bars and byways before bringing on her big show as Bibi decides to go all the way and, with razor and scalpel, just about get out of her skin—or help a friend out of his. Beyond the styptic pencil and safety blades.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The language Koja employs is fresh and astonishing, harsh yet beautiful.”
—Washington Post Book World

“Perversely beautiful.”
—Vector

“Unexpectedly poignant … Sentences as sharp and to the point as a scrotal
stud.”
—SPIN

Purchase a copy here