I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.
“When humans sing together, even if we start in disharmony, our voices find their way unconsciously into agreement,” (“Breathe,” Bush 117).
It’s taken me a while to organize my thoughts around Skin. I found it very hard to be engaged or interested in many of the stories I was reading, and it was only when finishing the collection and mulling it over that I was able to dissect my feelings over what I had read. Overall, I think the characters in the stories are interesting and layered the stories themselves are slow and sometimes feel like a chore to get through. Even though the plots themselves are intriguing with the implications of worlds suffering through climate change and pandemics, I could only recognize this a few days after the story ended. While reading I just couldn’t get interested enough to care about what was happening.
But I also wasn’t a fan of Bush’s novel Blaze Island, so it’s more likely that her writing style just isn’t for me. I think there are many readers who will enjoy her style, but I definitely struggled to finish this collection.
Usually I give a rating on each of the stories in a short story collection, but since I felt the same through most of these stories I’m just going to share my thoughts on each of them.
Benevolence: An East Village Story – I don’t know if this was the right story to start the collection with. The decisions of the narrator baffled me and it’s more of a novella than a short story. I liked the setting though.
Skin – This was an interesting one, very short but I enjoyed the intimacy of this one.
Animals – Another very short one and honestly one I had forgotten about until flipping through to write this review.
Voices Over Water – This story jumped around a bit through time and characters, so I struggled to figure out who exactly was narrating what while reading it.
The International Headache Conference – I liked the strangeness of this story and the idea of living with an invisible disability. I also liked the intimacy in this one.
Touch – I loved that this was set during the pandemic and wish it hadn’t been so short. I enjoyed it but would have loved to read a longer story with these characters.
Breath – I like the themes of community and song with this one, but did forget most of the plot until flipping through for this review.
Camouflage – This one was probably my favourite from the collection. I loved the protagonist and the messiness that surrounded him. Great setting and a great story.
Roxanne (after Edmond Rostand) – Another one I surprisingly enjoyed since I don’t typically read a lot of historical fiction. I liked the format of this story being told in a letter and how all the pieces came together in the end.
Mortals – Another very short one, hard to read just because it deal with a hurt animal but another one I enjoyed.
Derecho – I enjoyed this one too. I loved the setting of the world in which serious winds are plaguing the world and our protagonists obsession in following them. This was also more a of a novella but it was a really enjoyable read.
Glacial – This was an odd one that even looking back at I can’t make much sense of.
In the Park, the Great Horned Owl Summons His Mate – More like a poem, but I liked the writing style from an animal perspective. One of the more unique ones in the collection.
Publication: April 22 2025
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Pages: 224 pages (Paperback)
Source: River Street Writing
Genre: Fiction, Short Stories, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
In Skin, Catherine Bush plunges into the vortex of all that shapes us. Summoning relationships between the human and more-than-human, she explores a world where touch and intimacy are both desirable and fraught.
Ranging from the realistic to the speculative, Bush’s stories tackle the condition of our restless, unruly world amidst the tumult of viruses, climate change, and ecological crises. Here, she brings to life unusual and perplexing a man falls in love with the wind; a substitute teacher’s behaviour with a student brings unforeseen risks; a woman becomes fixated on offering foot washes to strangers.
Bold, vital, and unmistakably of the moment, Skin gives a charged and animating voice to the question of how we face the world and how, in the process, we discover tenderness and allow ourselves to be transformed.
Sarah O'Connor 