Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel

“Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks." —New York Times

?“Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country.” —Cornel West

Lost Memory of Skin is a provocative novel of spiritual and moral redemption from Russell Banks, the author of Affliction, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and other acclaimed masterworks of contemporary American fiction. 

Uncompromising and complex, Lost Memory of Skin is the story of The Kid, a young sex offender recently released from prison and forced to live beneath a South Florida causeway. When The Professor, a man of enormous intellect and appetite, takes The Kid under his wing, his own startling past will cause upheavals in both of their worlds. At once lyrical, witty, and disturbing, Banks’s extraordinary novel showcases his abilities as a world-class storyteller as well as his incisive understanding of the dangerous contradictions and hypocrisies of modern American society.

After doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, the Kid is forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and choices he struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. The two men forge a tentative partnership, but when the Professor's past resurfaces, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider all he has come to believe, and make a fateful choice when faced with a new kind of moral decision.

A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin explores the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.

“[It] is a pleasure to see [Banks’] gift turned to big, semisurreal characters. The grand, rambling examination of guilt and blame takes place against a ravishingly bleak backdrop, lyrically described, while each revelation of character is like a quiet explosion.” - Time Out New York

“A compelling story, the kind that draws you in and makes you care about the characters... The novel includes some of the loveliest and most vivid descriptions of the natural world that Banks has ever written…it is also one of those rare, strange, category-defying fictions that grabs hold of you in the same way that the iguana, early in the story, sinks its teeth into the tender flesh of the Kid’s hand. It’s hard to shake it off. And even when you do, it leaves a mark.” - Chicago Tribune

“A compelling story... one of those rare, strange, category-defying fictions that grabs hold of you... It’s hard to shake it off. And even when you do, it leaves a mark.” - Chicago Tribune

“Mr. Banks knows plot, and incorporates intriguing complications to keep the novel building power all the way to the end.” - Pittsburg Post-Gazette

“Banks’s enormous gamble in both plot and character pays off handsomely…By the end, Kafka is rubbing elbows with Robert Ludlum, and Banks has mounted a thrilling defense of the novel’s place in contemporary culture.” - The New Yorker

“Banks may be the most compassionate fiction writer working today… Lost Memory of Skin is proof that Banks remains our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American Male.” - New York Times Book Review

“Among contemporary writers giving voice to America’s beleaguered working class, Russell Banks may have no peer…this oddly unsettling, beautifully crafted novel…raise[s] fascinating issues.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“One of our finest novelists gives voice to the unspeakable…[A] compelling story” - O, the Oprah Magazine

“One of America’s finest writers has written a novel about sex offenders, and he’s done so in such a powerful and insightful way that “Lost Memory of Skin” should be required reading for anyone interested in fixing the country’s broken criminal justice system…Throughout the darkness of his story, we’re treated to Banks’ command of the language and graceful turn of phrase…Banks, in his latest novel, takes an unflinching look at people at their worst and manages to turn it into art.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“Lost Memory of Skin should be required reading for anyone interested in fixing the country’s broken criminal justice system…Banks, in his latest novel, takes an unflinching look at people at their worst and manages to turn it into art.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“[It] is a pleasure to see [Banks’] gift turned to big, semisurreal characters. The grand, rambling examination of guilt and blame takes place against a ravishingly bleak backdrop, lyrically described, while each revelation of character is like a quiet explosion. Banks’s tone is apocalyptic, and the story contains little room for uplift or redemption... [The] author’s vision is…fascinating.” - Time Out New York

“Banks reveals the two [characters] with tenderness and trenchant wit, in a story that, not surprisingly, plumbs the depth of human despair and resilience. If that prowess is predictable, Skin is bound to leave you shaken and strangely reassured.” - USA Today

“Destined to be a canonical novel of its time... it delivers another of Banks’s wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life, and this one very particular to the early 21st century... Banks, whose great works resonate with such heart and soul, brings his full narrative powers to bear.” - Janet Maslin, New York Times

“His boldest imaginative leap yet into the invisible margins of society… Lost Memory of Skin is a haunting book.” - Wall Street Journal

“Russell Banks really does know how to pull his readers into a dark, dark world only to deliver us into the light.” - Boston Globe

“Banks is a master of peeling back the veneer to show us for the desperate creatures we are, no more so than in his fearless Lost Memory of Skin…[Banks] writes here with a combination of compassion and outrage, surprising bits of wit and astringent prose…Lost Memory of Skin is a compelling read and an indictment of our age.” - Miami Herald

“Banks is a master of peeling back the veneer to show us for the desperate creatures we are, no more so than in his fearless Lost Memory of Skin…[Banks] writes here with a combination of compassion and outrage… a compelling read and an indictment of our age.” - Miami Herald

“Banks’s willingness to confront… the hard truths about the world we live in… goes a long way toward explaining his longstanding reputation as one of America’s finest contemporary fiction writers.” - Boston Globe

“Banks is in top form in his seventeenth work of fiction, a cyclonic novel of arresting observations, muscular beauty, and disquieting concerns… a commanding, intrepidly inquisitive, magnificently compassionate, and darkly funny novel of private and societal illusions, maladies, and truths.” - Booklist (starred review)

“Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country.” - Cornel West

“Russell Banks’s work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time... I trust his portraits of America more than any other—the burden of it, the need for it, the hell of it.” - Michael Ondaatje