Lost Memory of Skin

Our Book Club selection that had me reading something I never would have chosen on my own. I found it increased my knowledge of something I didn't know much about other than the more lurid headlines. But it was rather repetitive, perhaps because the author kept it like a story rather than getting into all the scientific and behavioral research. Although he made the main character more likeable by lessening the deed, it was rather an unsatisfying read overall due to the increase of the problem, exacerbated by more alienated and shattered family life, it left this reader feeling not much can be done at the rate our society is going.

Was both more and less than I expected. Very well written (this was the more) but with an unusual subject. Ventures into 'taboo' areas which was both interesting but a bit creepy/seedy. Not for the prudish.Story line was not completely satisfying (this was the less) but still felt it was a good read. Will check out his other books as curious about what other subjects he may write about.

While the subject matter left me uneasy. This book is stellar Banks! He does such a good job of taking you inside the head of damaged lost men. The ending left with unanswered questions. Affliction got me hooked on Banks writing. To ma. It is his best work. I only gave it four stars because of the ending leaving me confused..

The book is well written and kept my interest. It dealt with a topic I have little knowledge of. Having the Social outcast character survive while the professor with all his intelligence is killed (or dies) is a mystery left to the reader.

Someone needs to write a good book about the need to revisit sex offender laws. Privately, everyone who knows about how our legal system treats sexual offenders will admit there are major problems which need to be addressed. (No one in political life will admit it publicly, for obvious reasons.) This novel beautifully sets up a story that illustrates the problem well. Does a very young man, who is not terribly bright, and who has done a truly bad thing (although, in the case, with no actual victim) deserve the same fate as a serial pedophile offender? Banks sets up a great case, backed by a couple of interesting characters, and then disappoints with a loose, poorly organized plot and, for the most part, surprisingly uninspired writing. I found myself wondering if this is another example of book which, due to his successes and reputation of the author, doesn't get the kind of editing it needs.

I found the writing ponderous, slow moving and other than the main figure, not very sympathetic. I read this book because it was our book club selection. While certainly providing a window into the depraved and uber-sad world of perverts and (somewhat) their reasons for becoming so, I had to drag myself through the long, slow-moving passages. I did like the ending because it twisted and turned in directions I didn't see coming. I'll give the author that applause.

I have read other books by Russel Banks and enjoyed the story as well as the true human characters. this book I disliked both. The story is a glimpse into the dark, sad, perverted and haunting world of a young man living on the streets after convicted as a sexual preditor. I read more than half of the book before I put it down and decided it was going no where I wanted to go - offered me no insights into how one ends up on the streets, lives on the streets becomes a sexual preditor etc. It was in my opinion a crude superficial story with little depth and poor character development. Maybe I have to read the entire book to get it but I dont want to. There is too many other great books out there to waste my time.

The main character of Banks' new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as "the Kid," may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail starting a ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage female.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options--the swamplands, the airport area, or the Causeway. He chooses the Causeway and meets other sex offenders, a seriously motley crew, who consciously isolate from each other. He befriends one old man, the Rabbit, but sticks to his tent, his bicycle, and his alligator-size pet iguana, Iggy. Later, he procures a Bible.

These disenfranchised convicts are enough to make readers squirm. Moreover, in the back of the reader's mind is the question of whether authorial intrusion will be employed in an attempt to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with these outcasts. It takes a master storyteller, one who can circumnavigate the ick factor, or, rather, subsume it into a morally complex and irresistible reading experience, to lure the wary, veteran reader.

Banks' artful narrative eases us in slowly and deftly breaks down resistance, piercing the wall of repugnance. It infiltrates bias, reinforced by social bias, and allows you to eclipse antipathy and enter the sphere of the damned. A willing reader ultimately discovers a captivating story, and reaches a crest of understanding for one young man without needing to accept him.

A series of very unfortunate events occur, and the Kid becomes a migrant, shuffling within the legal radius of permitted locales. At about this time, he meets the Professor, who the Kid calls "Haystack," an obese sociologist at the local university, an enigmatic man with a past of shady government work and espionage. He is conducting a study of homelessness and particularly the homeless, convicted sex offender population.

The Professor offers the Kid financial and practical assistance in exchange for a series of taped interviews. He aims to help the Kid gain control and understanding over his life, to empower him to move beyond his depravities. They form a partnership of sorts, but the Kid remains leery of the Professor and his agenda. The Professor's opaque past, his admitted secrets and lies, marks him as an unreliable narrator. Or does it?

Sex offenders are the criminal group most collectivized into one category of "monsters." Banks takes a monster and probes below the surface of reflexive response. There is no attempt to defend the Kid's crime or apologize for it. We see a lot of the events through his eyes, and decide whether he is reliable or not.

The book is divided into five parts. Along the way, Banks dips into rhetorical digressions on sex, geography, and human nature, slowing down the momentum and disengaging the tension. These intervals are formal and stiff, although they are eventually braided into the story at large. However, despite these static flourishes, the story progresses with confidence and strength.

Overall, the languid pace of the novel requires steadfast patience, but commitment to it has a fine payoff. Readers are rewarded with a thrilling denouement and a pensive but provocative ending. It inspires contemplation and dynamic discussion, and makes you think utterly outside the box.

Lost Memory of Skin chronicles the background and current difficulties of a 22-year-old convicted sex offender known as the Kid, who has served his prison time. When the novel opens he is living under a bridge in a Florida city, one of the few places he is permitted to stay because it is not within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. Backflashes reveal his lonely childhood, as he is exposed to the sexual couplings of his mother and becomes addicted to pornography by the age of 11. Although he is ironically still a virgin, his intent to meet and perhaps seduce a 14-year-old girl brands him as an offender alongside others who have committed much more predatory acts.

Then the Professor enters the Kid's life, supposedly to interview him for scholarly purposes. The Professor provides assistance and a kind of friendship, but it turns out that his own life is built on deception and lies, causing the Kid to reconsider everything he has believed.

This novel implies that our current laws regarding these offenders should be more closely examined. If you have ever looked online at the sex offender registry, you will know that the legal charge is listed, with no elaboration. Thus an offender found guilty of "Indecency with a child" could be a 19-year-old caught having sex with his 17-year-old girl friend or the rapist of a 5-year-old. Unlike other former convicts, the sex offender is forever publicly identified as such and is often restricted as to where he may reside. In an effort to keep the public safe, society has possibly created a new kind of victim.

I'll have to admit that I am extremely puzzled by the many highly favorable reviews for this 2011 novel. I recognize that it does reveal a current shortcoming in the American justice system, and that is a valuable contribution. The core examination of the background and life of the young sex offender is well done, creating understanding and empathy without condoning actions. So what's not to like? The other major character is unbelievable and his story seems to have no connection to the rest; the characters are not given names, only designations -- The Kid, The Professor -- leading to the appearances that this is an allegory, yet the point is unclear; the late introduction of a third major character, The Writer, to "explain things" is extremely awkward, and he really doesn't explain much of anything anyway.

So I would characterize this as a moderately interesting novel, but one with major flaws. I have read others by Russell Banks, so I know he is capable of much better.

Weird, meandering book with no plot, no resolution and no interesting developments. Banks has a great prose style and his older book, Continental Drift, is one of my favorites, but this one fails to launch. All the James Michener-esque stuff about the prehistory of Florida is just random showing off and never connects to the main story. I had a really hard time slogging through this and recommend that you avoid it.

Russell Banks has long been considered one of the finest writers of literary fiction in America today. His portrait of the American landscape's dark side and the tortured souls who inhabit it have leapt from the small page to the big screen in award-winning films such as Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter. LOST MEMORY OF SKIN presents perhaps the most challenging work of Banks's career. With controversial and dark subject matter that is expertly handled, he creates a novel that will linger in the memory of its readers long after the final page is turned.

The main characters are not as much "people" as they are symbols and metaphors. With the exception of a few tertiary characters, the central figures here have no names. The protagonist, a convicted sex offender, is known simply as the Kid. In his early 20s, his life is already all but over. Convicted of soliciting sex with a minor, he has done his time in prison and is now forced to live under a causeway in Miami that is inhabited by fellow ex-cons and social miscreants. They represent the sad underbelly of society from which most people avert their eyes; they are the invisible minority.

The Kid is unable to get worthwhile employment, he cannot live within 2,500 feet of where children may gather, and he must wear an electronic device on his ankle for a decade, preventing him from wandering beyond the county limits. Whether the Kid was actually guilty of the crime for which he was incarcerated or set up in a string of potential sex offenders becomes almost irrelevant. The Kid, like most people, has made many mistakes in his life that he wishes he could change. His dark and somewhat perverted impulses have dominated his decision-making process and put him into a situation that seems hopeless.

Then, out of the blue, a local college professor approaches the causeway camp of mostly ex-sex offenders and offers them a deal. He is a sociologist of questionable moral character and full of secrets himself --- but to desperate people like the Kid, he is seen as a potential way out of a life that is virtually non-existent. The Professor offers the Kid and his comrades an opportunity to change their lives by controlling their impulses. In return, the Professor will gain valuable research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders.

The Kid and the Professor form a strange bond --- one that is strengthened after the Professor comes to the Kid's financial aid when a police raid all but destroys every possession he had under the causeway. As they begin to build trust, the Professor slowly lets on about his own past --- one that is full of secrets. The Kid is not sure if he can believe the story the Professor has spun about a man who is under surveillance by certain government agencies that wish to silence him. He makes an odd request of the Kid when he asks him not to believe that suicide is the reason behind his death. The Kid reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile, the Kid aligns himself with the Writer --- a journalist looking to uncover the truth behind the Professor's past. It is during this journey into the Professor's life that the Kid will smack first-hand into a parallel narrative that recalls his own past and questionable moral choices --- and he begins to fear that their fates may be destined to have the same ends.

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN is challenging and profane to the point of pornographic. Yet it is so unflinchingly real that you cannot help but turn the pages as Banks digs deeper and deeper into the psyches that shape the shadowed edges of American culture.

Reviewed by Ray Palen

Anyone who follows my reviews would know that I'm a HUGE fan of Russell Banks. I've labeled him the greatest American author on several occasions and have championed his work for years. The diversity he shows in his layering of complex subjects, themes and focal points is impressive. His character development is aces and he truly understands how to bring the reader in to the most complex of narratives and deliver an experience unlike any other.

I thought I was going to love this novel.

Conceptually, `Lost Memory of Skin' has a rich subtext that promises no easy answers yet something profound and provocative. The laws surrounding sex offenders are murky at best and really do need a revisit, since no case is the same and there are many young men who are scorned and scared for their entire lives for a foolish mistake that is NOT the same as some other more serious crimes. The basic concept of this novel was to bring that necessity to the forefront by delving into the life of a young man, convicted of a sex crime he didn't actually commit (well, not in whole) and contrast him with the obvious scum he's associated with. Enter a mysterious professor and his odd interest in the `kid' and you have a premise that promises something more than it actually provides.

The main issue I had with this book was the overbearing redundancy of the prose. The character development for our protagonist especially is ridiculously repetitive and not in the least bit insightful. It was as if Russell Banks drew a blank when trying to formulate this character and so he decided to tell us over and over again about the poor kid's porn addiction. He never fleshed out any reason behind his actions and his last ditch effort to give the novel some sort of clarity of purpose was too little too late. That final chapter needed to come pages and chapters and an entire book length sooner, to be honest. The Professor himself was an enigma of unnecessary. His purpose is never really stated wholly, and while there is a sliver of possible credibility given in a case of mistaken identity, he really becomes a non-entity and a mere distraction. His `research' is non-credible and his attempt to convert the offenders under the causeway feels lazy and is ultimately scrapped altogether when Banks runs out of ideas and decides to abandon ship and move on.

That is what this novel felt like to me; a bunch of ideas that Banks could never fully develop and so he merely bounced from one to the other until he concluded the book by telling us the reason he wrote it.

I hate giving Banks a low grade. I recently reviewed both `Cloudsplitter' and `The Darling' (5-star reviews for both) and I've raved how `The Sweet Hereafter' changed the way I read novels, but this was a complete missed opportunity. Like I said, this subject was so rich with promise and yet Banks failed to give any of this meaning.

This work of journalistic, realist fiction by novelist Russell Banks investigates the life of a convicted sex offender. The “kid” as he is called, lives in a colony of homeless convicts under a causeway on the Florida coast. Meeting a professor of sociology who is interested in the causes of homelessness, the two develop an unlikely connection over interviews. While Russell is sincere in his efforts to develop this unknown interstice of the American experience, at times his form of expression is too direct. Still, for all the pedantry, the story carries along well through the realism of the dialogue and the mounting psychological tensions.

Reading about homeless people is tough. Reading about sex offenders is even tougher. Reading about homeless, sex offenders can be downright difficult, which is what The Lost Memory of Skin by award-winning Russell Banks is all about. What’s interesting is that Banks manages to write about this difficult combination without making the reader squirm too much. Rather than being about sex offenses, it’s about people who live on the fringes of society and, in this case, they just happen to be in the registry.

Set in the Florida panhandle, the book follows two main characters, The Kid and The Professor. The Kid is 21 and a convicted sex offender living under an overpass with other convicted offenders. It’s one of two places in town that is the mandatory distance away from a school or public park and the group of men form, if not a friendship, then a cooperation of sorts based on their mutual exclusion from society. Life is fairly predictable until The Professor shows up wanting to interview The Kid about his day-to-day life. The Professor has a keen interest in the link between sex crimes and homelessness and The Kid spends a lot of time wondering what The Professor’s end game is.

There were times when I was reading this book that I wasn’t sure whether I was enjoying it or not. It’s hard for me to read a book where I feel empathy for a character that I should probably hate. It was even harder because I had no idea what The Kid had done until much later in the book, so I had a lot of anxiety about what was to come. But when it was all said and done, the fact that I had an emotional reaction (good or bad) is an indication that it was worth the read.

Now that I’ve had some time to look back and reflect, I have to admit that Banks‘ way of writing is rather brilliant. If someone had told me that the book was made up of characters with generic names I would have thought it was a cop-out and a way to avoid full character development. But Banks actually manages to develop the characters even more in-depth because of their generic identities. It allows the reader to focus on the issues that the characters face more fully than if they had real names. Because ultimately, this isn’t a book about characters, it’s a social commentary. It’s about how one mistake can ruin someone’s life. It’s about how being cast out from society with nowhere to go results in a snowball effect. It’s about how being required to live a certain distance away from a school or a park can be pretty problematic when there isn’t any housing that meets the qualifications. It’s about how a community more or less forces homelessness and then tries to address its homelessness problem.

So if you’re looking for a happy-go-lucky story, this is definitely not the book for you. But if you’re even slightly interested in reading The Lost Memory of Skin, then I highly recommend reading it. Along with all of the social commentary, there are some really great plot twists. Plus, it has an ending not unlike The Life of Pi in that it will leave you questioning everything. It can be slow-going and I didn’t love it while I was reading it, but looking back I find that I enjoyed it much more than I had originally thought.

A novel about a convicted, homeless sex offender, the creepy fellow sex offenders who live under a causeway with him, and a professor who treats them like lab rats - how can this book possibly be good? I was a little apprehensive about reading this one because I really don't want to read anything explicit about such an awful subject. Fortunately, there wasn't too much detail about the really horrible things that some people do although there were some sexually explicit terms and acts that made me uncomfortable just to read.

The Kid is a registered sex offender, has to wear a GPS anklet at all times and keep it charged, and has almost nowhere to live because he has to stay in the county but has to stay at least 2500 feet away from children, eliminating everywhere except a camp under the causeway, the swamp, and a terminal at the airport. The Professor, an outsider, a pretty odd guy with secrets, befriends the Kid as part of a social experiment.

I really cared about the Kid, could see the world from his viewpoint, and I liked that he tried so hard to take care of his animals, not always successfully. For the most part, I didn't learn much about the other sex offenders except for a nasty politician whom I would have rather not known about, but that is because most of the characters don't want to be known. The Professor...what is the truth about him?

"This time the Kid doesn't resist. He's remembered that he's an object, a thing, not a human being with a will and a goal, and that he's only capable of reacting, not acting. The Professor's the human being here, not the Kid."

The book moved along at a good pace and, for the most part, I liked the style of writing. Dialogue in italics instead of quotes took a little interpretation - who was speaking and to whom? As well as being a very entertaining novel, this story is also a social commentary, but the reader must decide for herself what the answers should be.

I was given an advance reader's edition by the publisher so the quote may have changed in the published edition. Thank you to ECCO.

Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell Banks's "Lost Memory of Skin" due to its controversial subject matter and there's no doubt that it's a morally complex read. The main character, known only to us at "the Kid" is a young man who is a convicted sex offender. Set in south Florida, he is forced to reside, with other offenders and his pet Iguana, under a causeway. While living here, he encounters a huge and enigmatic man, known only as "the Professor" from the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders and the two form an uneasy friendship.

Banks's languid writing style draws you into the story and in some ways it brings to mind some of the great coming-of-age novels of the US, such as "Catcher in the Rye" and even "Huckleberry Finn". Although physically somewhat older than the protagonists of those novels, the Kid's emotional age is not that different and the crimes for which he has been convicted are more down to naivety than anything substantially evil. By having the Kid represent the plight of these sex offenders is partly what makes this morally challenging as it's easy to if not forgive, then understand the circumstances that led to his crime while others have a more troubling moral background. This is, I suspect, part of what Banks is getting at in terms of the tendency to categorize everyone under the same term.

Banks also challenges the patently daft and morally questionable way the US justice system deals with these offenders. The Kid, like his colleagues, has been released from prison but is still on, in his case, a ten year parole whereby he is required to wear a tracking device, banned from moving out of Calousa county but not allowed to live within 2500 feet of any school, playground etc. This equates to a radius of 9.25 million square feet. In an urban county this means that there are only three places that don't intersect these circles: under the causeway, out in the swamp or the international airport where police can arrest you for vagrancy effectively ruling this option out. Thus, the system enforces homelessness. This situation is repeatedly emphasized and at times, Banks can get a little preachy on the situation, albeit understandably. Whatever the answer is, this surely isn't it.

The situation is so ridiculous that you find yourself sympathizing with the Kid, and empathizing with a sex offender is not an easy place to sit. It's a measure of Banks's style and skill that allows the reader to sit there. Despite my initial resistance, I was drawn in to his story and to the strange relationship with the Professor.

It's when the story turns to focus more on the Professor's background, about three quarters of the way through the book, that the book takes another uncomfortable twist. I won't reveal details, but he has a past - although what that is is somewhat open to debate. We are told that the Professor's character allows him to compartmentalize the past and to some extent, perhaps he is representing everyman in the ways we compartmentalize all sex offenders under one bracket and can dismiss them all under the same moral judgement. Either way, the story gets a little weird from this point on and for me at least didn't seem to quite fit with the tone of the rest of the book.

It's a book that certainly stimulates debate. There's a fair amount of what can be termed "adult content" particularly relating to the Kid's childhood porn addiction, some debate over good and evil and if that is intrinsic or a label we apply, and huge questions over the morals of the treatment of offenders in the US. While the questions asked are not always comfortable, the questions it asks are important and the book itself is highly readable and draws you in to the story.

I've never read fiction about a convicted sex offender before, and that's why I was intrigued by this book. You grow to empathize with the protagonist (a sex offender), though you must constantly question him and everyone else around him. I liked the mystery in this book, the fact that nobody was quite what they seemed.

For me, this didn't go anywhere. The characters don't show any development, and OK, maybe that's the point, but I got bored. When the strangeness with the Professor began I was intrigued, but that also went nowhere. I wish I knew more about the other sex offenders the Kid lives with, rather than hearing repeatedly about Kid's mother or vague ramblings about the surroundings.

I am glad I read this, but I won't read it again and would only recommend it to a certain type (patient, empathetic, introspective) type of reader. I think Banks could've done a lot to move the plot along and get the reader more involved.

With Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks has accomplished something I would not have believed possible. Not only has he used a convicted sex offender as the lead character of his new novel, he has managed to make the young man both likable and someone readers can respect and root for as the novel progresses.

This twenty-something, young sex offender, known only as "The Kid," finds himself living under a Miami Beach bridge as the novel opens. Like all the rest who share this horrible living space with him, the Kid is caught up in an irony of his conviction. His probation terms require that he not leave the county, but he is not allowed to live anywhere within 2500 feet of where children are likely to congregate. Living under the causeway is the only way he and his fellow offenders can meet this term of their probations.

For all his lack of experience, the Kid is a complex character. He knows nothing about his father except for the man's name, and he was raised by one of the most indifferent mothers imaginable. The Kid, in fact, can be said to have raised himself. His addiction to Internet porn, an addiction he acquired as a young boy, was probably the defining event of his life. That his mother only got upset about her son's addiction to pornography because he maxed out her credit card, is indicative of the moral guidance he received at home.

When "The Professor," a hugely obese college professor from a local school, appears on the scene, the Kid's life begins to change. Suddenly, someone wants to hear what the Kid has to say about his situation and wants to organize things under the causeway in a way that will make life a little easier for those who live there. At first suspicious of the Professor's motives (even to suspecting the Professor of wanting to molest him), the Kid gradually comes to trust the man. When the Professor is revealed to have problems and peculiarities of his own, things will take an even darker, unexpected twist but the Kid, true to his own moral code, will somehow manage to persevere.

Lost Memory of Skin does not overtly argue that the rest of us should try harder to "understand" what drives sex offenders to commit the horrible crimes they commit. Banks is much subtler than that. His message is more about the "big net" approach to punishment that treats all degrees of sex crime as being pretty much the same. Readers will have to judge for themselves whether or not Banks's argument is a sound one.

It was only after I heard Banks speak about Lost Memory of Skin at the 2011 Texas Book Festival that I became curious enough to want to read it. Frankly, prior to that event, the idea of reading a rather long novel about convicted sex offenders was not an appealing one. Thankfully, my curiosity won out over my natural aversion to the topic, and I did not miss out on one of the year's best novels. It was a close call.

Never have I been so entertained, amused, bemused, and flat-out engrossed by a story and a story teller as with this novel by Russell Banks, and I've been reading for a long time and have read a great many books, beginning with Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a boy some fifty years ago. I have read Banks before and liked him as a writer up until his last novel before this one, THE RESERVE, which I thought bordered on ridiculous. I had thought he should retire. In addition the subject matter of LOST MEMORY OF SKIN, the life of sex offenders, was not something I wanted to learn any more about than I already knew - having professionally worked with victims; so I wasn't going to bother reading this one. But I teach creative writing at a community college as part of its continuing education program, and Banks was on tour and at a local independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover in Denver, and I thought it would be a good experience for my class to go and hear him speak in lieu of a class. And so we went, and Banks was so engaging and after he spoke of and then read from the book, I couldn't help myself and bought a copy.

One thing I do with my class is to give them a list of writers who have influenced me with their writing: Hemingway, Kerouac, Kesey, Hunter Thompson, and most recently David Foster Wallace; and in reading this book, whether or not Banks is aware of it, I see their influence in his writing. If it isn't influence, then it is just plain eerie. LOST MEMORY OF SKIN has so many parallels with Wallace's INFINITE JEST - the underlying themes of addiction, lying, self-control, self-determination, suicide, dreams, fate and determinism versus free will, Freud versus Ellis, loneliness and friendship, affiliation; as well as stylistically - black humor, and beautiful and poetic rule-bending prose. Banks, like all of the writers named above, inserts himself in the story; but also takes aim at, and pokes fun of, Hemingway specifically, and Kerouac and Thompson and Wallace indirectly, as well as himself as writer. If his similarity to Wallace and Kesey he is not aware of or denies - so be it. It's there.

Banks' prose just rolls off the page and the tale will rock your assumptions about people who are convicted sex offenders, and also victims, law enforcers, reporters & writers, researchers and professors; and the craft of writing. There are three main characters none of who have names but are called The Kid, The Professor, and The Writer. Two of the three have addictions and Banks examines the why and how of that as well as the consequences and the possibility of cure, but does not offer up any solutions as such, nor a neat packaged ending other than - The (old) Writer gets the girl. Lol Mister Russell Banks.

I've never read fiction about a convicted sex offender before, and that's why I was intrigued by this book. You grow to empathize with the protagonist (a sex offender), though you must constantly question him and everyone else around him. I liked the mystery in this book, the fact that nobody was quite what they seemed.

For me, this didn't go anywhere. The characters don't show any development, and OK, maybe that's the point, but I got bored. When the strangeness with the Professor began I was intrigued, but that also went nowhere. I wish I knew more about the other sex offenders the Kid lives with, rather than hearing repeatedly about Kid's mother or vague ramblings about the surroundings.

I am glad I read this, but I won't read it again and would only recommend it to a certain type (patient, empathetic, introspective) type of reader. I think Banks could've done a lot to move the plot along and get the reader more involved.

With Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks has accomplished something I would not have believed possible. Not only has he used a convicted sex offender as the lead character of his new novel, he has managed to make the young man both likable and someone readers can respect and root for as the novel progresses.

This twenty-something, young sex offender, known only as "The Kid," finds himself living under a Miami Beach bridge as the novel opens. Like all the rest who share this horrible living space with him, the Kid is caught up in an irony of his conviction. His probation terms require that he not leave the county, but he is not allowed to live anywhere within 2500 feet of where children are likely to congregate. Living under the causeway is the only way he and his fellow offenders can meet this term of their probations.

For all his lack of experience, the Kid is a complex character. He knows nothing about his father except for the man's name, and he was raised by one of the most indifferent mothers imaginable. The Kid, in fact, can be said to have raised himself. His addiction to Internet porn, an addiction he acquired as a young boy, was probably the defining event of his life. That his mother only got upset about her son's addiction to pornography because he maxed out her credit card, is indicative of the moral guidance he received at home.

When "The Professor," a hugely obese college professor from a local school, appears on the scene, the Kid's life begins to change. Suddenly, someone wants to hear what the Kid has to say about his situation and wants to organize things under the causeway in a way that will make life a little easier for those who live there. At first suspicious of the Professor's motives (even to suspecting the Professor of wanting to molest him), the Kid gradually comes to trust the man. When the Professor is revealed to have problems and peculiarities of his own, things will take an even darker, unexpected twist but the Kid, true to his own moral code, will somehow manage to persevere.

Lost Memory of Skin does not overtly argue that the rest of us should try harder to "understand" what drives sex offenders to commit the horrible crimes they commit. Banks is much subtler than that. His message is more about the "big net" approach to punishment that treats all degrees of sex crime as being pretty much the same. Readers will have to judge for themselves whether or not Banks's argument is a sound one.

It was only after I heard Banks speak about Lost Memory of Skin at the 2011 Texas Book Festival that I became curious enough to want to read it. Frankly, prior to that event, the idea of reading a rather long novel about convicted sex offenders was not an appealing one. Thankfully, my curiosity won out over my natural aversion to the topic, and I did not miss out on one of the year's best novels. It was a close call.

Never have I been so entertained, amused, bemused, and flat-out engrossed by a story and a story teller as with this novel by Russell Banks, and I've been reading for a long time and have read a great many books, beginning with Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a boy some fifty years ago. I have read Banks before and liked him as a writer up until his last novel before this one, THE RESERVE, which I thought bordered on ridiculous. I had thought he should retire. In addition the subject matter of LOST MEMORY OF SKIN, the life of sex offenders, was not something I wanted to learn any more about than I already knew - having professionally worked with victims; so I wasn't going to bother reading this one. But I teach creative writing at a community college as part of its continuing education program, and Banks was on tour and at a local independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover in Denver, and I thought it would be a good experience for my class to go and hear him speak in lieu of a class. And so we went, and Banks was so engaging and after he spoke of and then read from the book, I couldn't help myself and bought a copy.

One thing I do with my class is to give them a list of writers who have influenced me with their writing: Hemingway, Kerouac, Kesey, Hunter Thompson, and most recently David Foster Wallace; and in reading this book, whether or not Banks is aware of it, I see their influence in his writing. If it isn't influence, then it is just plain eerie. LOST MEMORY OF SKIN has so many parallels with Wallace's INFINITE JEST - the underlying themes of addiction, lying, self-control, self-determination, suicide, dreams, fate and determinism versus free will, Freud versus Ellis, loneliness and friendship, affiliation; as well as stylistically - black humor, and beautiful and poetic rule-bending prose. Banks, like all of the writers named above, inserts himself in the story; but also takes aim at, and pokes fun of, Hemingway specifically, and Kerouac and Thompson and Wallace indirectly, as well as himself as writer. If his similarity to Wallace and Kesey he is not aware of or denies - so be it. It's there.

Banks' prose just rolls off the page and the tale will rock your assumptions about people who are convicted sex offenders, and also victims, law enforcers, reporters & writers, researchers and professors; and the craft of writing. There are three main characters none of who have names but are called The Kid, The Professor, and The Writer. Two of the three have addictions and Banks examines the why and how of that as well as the consequences and the possibility of cure, but does not offer up any solutions as such, nor a neat packaged ending other than - The (old) Writer gets the girl. Lol Mister Russell Banks.

"Extreme law is often extreme injustice," wrote Roman playwright Terence. It is a thought echoed through the ages by the likes of Cicero, Racine, and Voltaire; and now expanded upon by Russell Banks in Lost Memory of Skin. It is this idea that is the strength of his long and, unfortunately, flawed new novel.

If a person, a fellow human being, is a convicted pedophile, whether through naïve stupidity, as with the Kid in Banks' novel, or through full-bore freaky calculation, as with Banks' Shyster, social retribution is harsh and comes in one gradation: condemnation to a life of ostracism, loathing, and impoverishment. Some might say, "So what? You reap what you sow." But as Banks seems to imply in his understanding and sympathetic rendering of the abused, hapless Kid, should there not be degrees? Do people like the Kid deserve to endure the same degree of misery as the conniving, knowledgeable Shyster? What is the value of justice if, by way of one size fits all, we mete out a little justice and a whole lot of injustice?

Here in lies the merit of Lost Memory of Skin. It dramatizes an imperfect system, that appears to have progressed little beyond the Code of Hammurabi regarding this offense, and has us consider options, many of which the Professor expresses. If you fancy yourself open-minded, you'll find the novel thought provoking and worthy use of your time.

If, on the other hand, you're simply seeking a rewarding literary reading experience, Banks' current effort might disappoint you. While immeasurably superior to his last work, The Reserve, it does not compare to some of his remarkably satisfying novels that include Sweet Hereafter: A Novel and Affliction.

Lost Memory of Skin feels like two disparate novels graphed onto each other to make an uneasy whole. The Kid is the story of an abused, lost youth living, almost literally, outside himself. The Professor is a bigger than life figure with many pasts, one of which catches up with him. Yes, we know his purpose: to communicate the social message and to act as the touchstone for the Kid's long delayed self-actualization. However, the Professor is often a distraction. Then there is the Writer who materializes toward the end of the novel to replace the Professor and whom we greet with a very audible, "Huh?"

In short, the novel suffers from structural issues. However, despite its imperfections and because of the important issues it raises, the novel is worthwhile and better than most current popular fiction.

Lost Memory of Skin was my first exposure to Russell Banks and it definitely will not be my last. Banks is an elegant writer who dares to tackle subterranean subject matter centered on a 21 year old sex offender living under a bridge in a fictional Miami.
I get the impression that Banks was shooting for a mixture of one part teleology and two parts Mark Twain adventure.
The Kid is much like a John the Baptist figure living in the wilderness below a bridge among the lepers, reflecting on his transgressions and yearning for something beyond his usual urges. The fact that the Kid doesn't even understand the consequences of his urges is one of the most salient points of the book. This Kid has been abandoned by a culture that has little to offer beyond consumerism and live for the moment bliss as exhibited by his only role model, his mother.
Banks does a great job of implying the thematic elements of the title throughout the work. The Kid has no sexual experiences in the real world to develop a memory of, instead a digital sex life of pixels on a screen. What memory of skin he does have is seeing his mother's naked boyfriends when he was a small boy and interacting with a pet Iguana she brings him from a lost weekend in Mexico.
The Professor is looking to lose the memory of his family upbringing and his apparent service as a duplicitous government agent. He seems also to forget that his skin is his humanity and instead of abusing it with piles and piles of meatloaf and potatoes and pies he should treat himself with respect by taking care of his body.
Again, both the Kid and the Professor abuse their bodies amidst a culture that also seems to lack a memory of anything of value beyond a post World War II surfeit of temporary greatness.
Even the Writer character who makes a brief appearance at the end conveys a sense of this loss of value, at one point even telling the kid that magazine writers make up a lot of their stories based on cursory experiences with their subject matter.
Like John the Baptist living off locusts out in a ravine in the desert, the Kid shows us the frayed edges of the society we have created as he dumpster dives for day over the limit yuppie food to take back to his ramshackle abode beneath a freeway bridge on the outskirts of Calusa.

Banks is one of America's finest authors and his "Continental Drift" still gets my vote as a top candidate the "Great American Novel." In "Lost Memory of Skin," though, his genius at dialogue and characterization get a bit overwhelmed by his heavy use of symbolism. The society outcast who at the core turns out to be a better person than most of his accusers, the morbidly obese representative of the intellectual elite, the penchant for creating and believing in spy and lost treasure fantasies, the hurricane whose force sweeps away all in its path, the innocent animals, etc., etc.
It's a credit to Banks' skills that he kept me going to the end, and I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I'd have definitely preferred a tale more grounded in everyday reality.

Margaret Atwood, no stranger to the dark, herself, says of Russell Banks' latest novel LOST MEMORY OF SKIN that he "takes us into the dark side of the dark side." I could not agree more or have said it so well. The novel is troubling, compelling and profound as Mr. Banks certainly goes where more timid writers would not. His protagonist is the Kid, twenty-one, a high school graduate though barely literate, who has received a general discharge from the military for having been caught with pornography that he meant to distribute to his buddies in an effort to be accepted by them. Recently released from prison, the Kid is living under a south Florida causeway with several other convicted sex offenders, all of whom wear electronic ankle bracelets. The Kid, the quintessential loner, often dives in dumpsters for his food.

As always, Mr. Banks asks serious questions, some of which have no easy answers. What do we do with these outcasts of society who have served their jail sentences but literally have nowhere to live because of the law that says that they cannot come within 2,500 feet of children?

In a recent interview Mr. Banks says that he could see from his Miami Beach condo a causeway where a group of homeless men, sex offenders, were living. "That meant there were a group men down there living in squalor who ranged from sociopathic serial rapists to men who had been convicted of indecent exposure for urinating in the parking lot of a bar somewhere at 1 in the morning. . . So it was kind of a mixed gathering down there." Mr. Banks further states that he feels affection for the Kid although he understands that many people would not. Certainly he has created a character that you will not soon forget.

Russell Banks is the most interesting writer I have come upon in recent years and this is one of his best books so far.

The subject matter - sex offenders living in fear and degradation under a causeway outside Miami - and Banks' cosmic over-the-top approach is unlikely to appeal to everyone but it is worth making the effort.

The main character is a young man from a neglected background who becomes addicted to online pornography and ends up being caught in a police sting operation to capture child molesters.

After his release from custody, he has to wear an anklet for 10 years, report to his probation officer regularly and stay a certain distance from anywhere children may be found.

He - and his fellow "perverts" - become pariahs forced to live on the edges of a society that is indifferent and only interested in material progress.

An eccentric monstrously fat university professor takes an almost anthropological interest in the young man and a strange relationship builds up.

Banks balances the loneliness and excesses of the modern world, with its highways and skyscrapers, with the terrors of the natural world, such as hurricanes, and the Everglades with its snakes, alligators and menacing swamps and creeks.

There is some fine writing and Banks' description of online porn and the way it portrays women as "..like paying money to watch someone beat a dog" is hard to beat. It certainly isn't "Portnoy's Complaint".

The plot does not always work and the mystery surrounding the professor is hard going, as is the sudden appearance of a journalist who forms an implausible relationship with the main character.

However, this is a fine piece of work and Banks has been courageous in tackling a subject that has become an obsession in the West. One wonders if Nabokov would have found a publisher for "Lolita' nowadays.

Russell Banks does a great job in telling the story of a 21 year old sex offender. He tackles subjects like the proliferation of internet pornography - very graphic stuff easily obtained by anyone, including children, with an internet connection. It wasn't too long ago that Playboy and Penthouse magazines were the only source of 'entertainment for men'. Very mild by comparison to the internet. Banks also tells of the sexual exploitation of children in the internet age. A great example in the book is a photo-shoot involving scantily clad children. The Professor interprets it as just a harmless advertisement; the Cop interprets it as child-porn; but the Kid is confused and is not sure what to make of it.

You don't find out the nature of the Kid's crime until midway through the book. It turns out to be almost laughable, but indicates the stupidity and gullibility of the Kid.

I kept on thinking about Samuel R. Delaney's 1970's novel Dhalgren whose main character was also called Kid, and later Kidd. Not at all the same subject matter, but both characters have very heavy sexual appetites.

A terrific novel by a gifted writer.

Russell Banks has been informing and inspiring me for years. As a writer myself, I would have to say that he is one of my mentors. "Affliction" is on my top ten favorite book list, along with Richard Ford's "Independence Day," and pretty much anything by Joyce Carol Oates and Mary McGary Morris. "Lost Memory of Skin" is deceptively straightforward and naive in tone. Here are themes the novel caused me to dwell upon: Face the truth about who you are and accept the guilt (as opposed to the shame) of bad things you have done. Do not hold yourself above others, especially those who share your weaknesses. Create a community with others who mirror your problems so you won't lose sight of who you are and fool yourself into thinking you're blameless. Life is pretty much unknowable, but you can't use the mystery to absolve yourself of guilt. The characters in this novel are amusing and charming, and it's hard to grasp what to believe from their self-told tales. But that's also the fun of the book, which is essentially a puzzle, as all good novels should be. Try to suspend belief - and disbelief - and the truth will be revealed, though the "truth" is not necessary the "facts." Thanks again, Russell Banks, for getting me back to my own novel. "Lost Memory of Skin" has helped me un-block, and using "Skin" and "Affliction" as beacons, I will strive for deeper, better work.

Abandoned by his parents, failing at school, friendless, introverted teenager delivered himself up for his emotional void by a frantic consumption of pornographic websites since the age of 11 years. Lacking discernment, he strayed into a virtual relationship on the web and by visiting an RV with a minor, finds himself in the paradoxical situation of being sued for pedophilia while still being a virgin. After a term of imprisonment, he was sentenced to 10 years to wear an electronic bracelet and forbidden to live less than 800m children. Listed in the register of sex offenders available on the Internet, there is no job or housing. The only place in town where he can live without breaking the law is under a viaduct, relegated in the company of real predators, rapists and other sex offenders who can not stay elsewhere. Despite these calamitous lives, the tone of the book is rather self-mockery and the story ends with a small puff of optimism.
This beautifully written novel addresses several themes nothing of mine: the steamroller of American justice, exclusion after punishment, the internet big brother, urban loneliness.
Frankly, I really hooked.

A rapid paced and illuminating new novel featuring a 21st century witch-protagonist or holy fool named the Kid who's a 22 year old homeless virgin, Internet porn addict, and brilliant street smart renegade, and, yes, the unexpected yet universal model for the innumerable dehumanized and voiceless outcasts, and castaways that few can bare to look upon or think about, much less, help. Our contemporary untouchables are now forced to live in humiliation and squalor under freeways in major cities, in some cases for years, yet remain invisible. The novel's subject matter, "sex offenders," may startle at first, but think again, for any one of us could be living in London in 1850, and in our neglect and our blindness could become a model for Charles Dickens' well fed, selfish, and ignorant characters archly opining over, "those filthy lower class poor getting just what they deserve."

Russell Banks is in my opinion one of our greatest living novelists, and i've devoured almost everything he has written. 'Lost Memory of Skin' his new novel, may be his best since the brilliant 'Cloudsplitter.' As other reviewers have already noted, this novel deals with sex offenders, whom for the most part society has deemed justified outcasts, and he attempts to humanize them and carefully and slowly unveil the complexities. The fact that Banks chose to tackle this subject shows that he is willing to provoke and ask his readers to think long and hard about difficult issues. The fact that he doesn't pass judgement makes this book even more brilliant. I am hesitant to say too much without giving away plot details, but suffice to say that this is a page turner in addition to being a condemnation of the American justice system. It took me under a week to read it, I simply could not put it down. Mr. Banks should be applauded for yet another brilliant addition to his canon, and we as readers should be grateful for Mr. Banks for continuing to provoke and make us think about the complicated issues in this country!

When I picked this up, I already knew from reviews that the plot had to deal with a convicted sex offender being forced to live under an overpass due to his parole restrictions. I didn't know that the book was going to be a weird as it was. The weirdness comes from a secondary story to the sex offender's story (the sex offender being a 22 year old nicknamed The Kid). This second story is The Professor's story. The Professor is the nickname for a sociology professor from the nearby fictional university who happened upon The Kid and decided to interview him about being a homeless sex offender. Maybe I'm not smart enough to get what Russell Banks was trying to say by introducing The Professor's story - and making him such a caricature on several levels - but it took away from the more intersting story of The Kid. The book was still a good read - it was just weirder than it needed to be.

If you've read Banks' masterpieces -- such as his 1985 novel CONTINENTAL DRIFT, 1989 CLOUDSPLITTER or collected stories published in 2000 as THE ANGEL ON THE ROOF -- you'll stick with him through anything, as I have. But if you're turning to him for the first time, don't pick his 2011 LOST MEMORY OF SKIN. He has the skill to pull you in , but he lets you down more and more as it goes on. I finished it thinking that Banks needs to control his Sinclair Lewis complex and more convinced than ever that something you overhear on the subway may be a better starting point for a novel than some societal or ideological concern.

Entertaining verbiage. Ambiguous. But it's goal is to exonerate, not clarify. So the more effective as male propaganda. Why not instead of a southern working class white sex offender, a drug offender in the same mode who gets 10 years for smoking a joint--which is as common, far more unjust, way more devastating, is victimless, and not criminal . Why lament/justify a victim crime that is only now--in wee numbers--being prosecuted after thousands of years of carte blanche criminality. (Ask the 26,00 sex offense victims in the US military over this past year?)

"Memory" has an all male cast--a homeless hero, a professor, and a writer. But for a ball busting Black probation officer called "the cop," the voiceless women characters are absorbed in male lives. No sex victims, no hint of sex victims (except in two throw-away lines), no history of sexual crimes, and no indication of the power differential between men and women. Exemplary is Willow, the Canadian porn actor: she is not only not viewed as a victim, she downright adores the Kid for being his property, for having American soldier status, and for distributing her dvds to all his barracks buddies. She just bubbles over with liberal "consent." Mom? Well she gets to play Eve here. She is a single parent, the loose woman, whose sexual encounters, when overheard by her son, drive him to internet porn to the tune of masturbation 8 times a day for 12 years. Gloria, a proper librarian, also gets sexualized: she is not "hot enough" for the just out of jail Kid but serves as a strip-tease artist for her fat professor husband, and then two days after his suicide, is already coupled to the (Hemmingway) Writer. While Dolores, the outdoorswoman (nature), and chief certifier of the Kid's innocence, is a bit too warm even for the Kid who finds her emasculating. Thus, these women get to reveal nothing of their own subordination let alone to shine a light on the detritus of sex offenders.

Sex victims are thus disappeared so as not to detract sympathy from the hero. Even the novel's title reverses the very reality of the sexual offense. The Kid is viewed as having lost his bodily connection, when it's stupendously clear that it is sex offenders themselves who impose this sentence on their victims--who truly constitute the Other, a role the Kid would convince us he owns. Where are the violated and exploited porn actors the kid got off on? How did Willow's life turn out? Where are the criminals themselves? You know the kind who actually do criminal acts. I'm sorry but a few shots at OJ Simpson doesn't do. What gets questioned here are the grudgingly secured laws, laws still without teeth, and easily skirted (only 37% of those found guilty go to jail), or softened by indulgent judges out of touch with the victim's life and reality.

The whole structure of violence against women: rape, battery, incest, the sex industries of prostitution and sex slavery, sexual harassment, and s-m sex do not register a blip here. Pornography is present but is beyond criticism except for its effect on the viewer. Bank's formulation evades political context, male social power being non-existent in his set-up, as are the root causes of sexual crime. There is no interrogation at all on behalf of the victims. Women's Liberation never happened. This failure at politics is also a failure at sympathy. This is a white-wash.

Although a novel like this offers a perfect opportunity to question male sexuality itself, there is nary a whisper of it here. The Kid's level of engagement in porn--he purchases it, he derives pleasure in violence (including depicted crimes)--is never questioned either by him or the narrator. Nor is his willingness to circulate porn: he was booted out of the army, not for exploiting women, but because Afghan mores demanded this rule. Nor is the Kid answerable for his willingness to spend the night with a 14 year old girl: hey, it was a sting operation, no? For sure, it is the accused in this novel who get to do all the explaining--which shuts off questioning. Over and over again the Kid complains about his "object status." Was he an object during his 8x365x12 porn sessions? Was he an object when he set up his sex tryst? Is the Kid ever an object except in his own mind? (What he might be is a partial "victim" of the normalization of porn, but this, by implication is sanctioned). In fact, what the novel hides is exactly what it maintains: female object status in male sexuality.

But maybe the most convincing white-wash lies in the portrait of the Kid himself--his innocence inflated by clichés, alibis, victim-blaming, and the usual bleatings about male misery. I mean what would we think of him if he had no loving pets, had a sweet liberal parole officer, lived in his own apt. (like the typical sex offender), had a normal build, a normal social life, and a socially acceptable mom? I think we might be looking more at his sex offenses than at his scapegoat status. A status that he himself is active in pursuing by insisting on his isolation, his virginity, his "sex addiction" (which he stops on a dime); the raw deals of the army discharge, the sting operation, the surveillance sentence (actually a concession to prison), and his family dysfunction.

But less we have any doubt about his masculinity, his male credentials must also be established (for male readers). So the Kid has the biggest dick in his Army outfit. And despite his outsider, "loner" identity is a big man with the troops--thanks to his video sharing. And as a "prisoner" under the Causeway continues to bond with men. He's there as a man among men-- damaged by a female legal system. Accused men who speak no language because beer drinking, tattoos, shared instincts, and exclusionary camaraderie suffice. For a guy "born in a black hole" (not of woman born) life under the Causeway, which he is closest to in the final moments, must seem almost the perfect home.

..

.

"Lost Memory of Skin" is a surprisingly good book; surprising because it deals with two repulsive characters: a predatory sex offender and a morbidly obese professor with lots to hide. But, it is the capacity of literature in the hands of good writers like Russell Banks, to illuminate the interiors of such outwardly offensive characters, so that understanding eventually generates sympathy. In "Lost Memory of Skin," Banks does not indict (that is left to the reader) nor does he preach, although he comes close at times. Rather, this is a disturbing look at some important aspects of contemporary American life, which does not provide answers, but inexorably indicates that there must be a better way. The achievement of "Lost Memory of Skin" is that it blends an exciting and suspenseful plot with existential angst. I agree with Janet Maslin writing in the NYT: "'Lost Memory of Skin' is a major new work by Russell Banks destined to be a canonical novel of its time."

This book is fabulous. Unlike a lot of literary realism novels that are boring because they have no action, there is plenty of action in every chapter. The writing is very powerful. I like the outsider theme in literatue and this book is as good as it gets on that theme.

The author shows a great deal of wisdom and a strong ability to feel for others and understand people that many of us don't understand well.

The book has a lot of momentum from start to finish.

I loved it. One of the best reading expereinces I've ever had.

Though it contains superb, humane descriptions of the invisible life of homeless sex offenders (those in the Federal Registry) living under southern Florida's causeways - many of whom are minor, easily dismissed, harmless criminals doomed to a horrific life of government abuse, unemployment, scapegoating, denied humanity, recovery, forgiveness, growth and justice thanks to the Puritanical, hateful heritage of American know-nothings and perverse politicians - Banks manages to make only one or two characters real and denies them any chance of growth and believable choice even though he gives them the experiences, space and intelligence to have earned it. As a side benefit, his descriptions of Florida's natural coastal flora and fauna, swamps, and untamed water wilderness are among the greatest ever penned for this beautiful, doomed, lawless state. I was extremely disappointed by the end, and by much of the second half of the book. It was as if Banks didn't know where to take the story or his main character, and felt his message of moral outrage far outweighed his authorial responsibility to fiction.

I thought the premise was interesting and enjoyed most of the novel, but there were whole sections I just skipped over because they served no purpose to moving the story along. The book could have been at least 50 pages shorter and been a stronger novel. I lost patience with it by close to the end.

Banks has built his solid reputation on the stories of those who fall between the cracks, exposing his eccentric- often troubled- characters to the light for examination, the two primary protagonists the Kid and the Professor. The Kid wears a GPS monitoring device, part of his life for nine more years, as well as the designation of sexual offender in Florida. The law dictates that he be 2500 ft. from any location frequented by children, leaving only a few likely places for such offenders to inhabit. Various colonies of homeless outcasts gather by necessity, a loose confederation of misfits joined by the commonality of their crimes. Wending his way to trouble through an isolated childhood and early addiction to online porn, the Kid views the trajectory of his life in the shuffling minimalist existence of fellow travelers. Short, boy-like even at twenty-two, the young man exudes asexuality, required to forego the electronic stimulation that delivered fantasy as reality and led him to the artifice of pornography to fill the idle hours of an indigent life.

His polar opposite, the Professor is larger-than-life in presence, intelligence and arrogance, a giant with an insatiable appetite and a past full of secrets, "a moist, quarter-ton packet of solid flesh wrapped in pale human skin". Ostensibly befriending the Kid to interview him for a sociological study of homelessness and sexual offenders, association with the Professor offers both opportunities and risks, an untrustworthy and manipulative man masquerading as trustworthy, brilliant enough to orchestrate yet another drama at someone else's expense, though the Kid is not entirely oblivious to the Professor's devious nature. Traveling in the obscure world of social outcasts, the Kid and the Professor enter the underbelly of a fractured society at its most troubling, the detritus of civilization shunned by others and ministered to by overburdened agencies following strict legal guidelines.

This is Banks' milieu, a listing ship of fools awash in a city either sun-drenched or hurricane-battered, propelled into chaos by a police raid or rising water that annihilates a flimsy camp, the truth as elusive as the rush of illicit behavior. From shantytown Causeway to the Great Panzacola Swamp, the air is fetid with the unwashed, the disenfranchised and the unwanted whose crimes have placed them outside the city's regard, yet another thorny problem with little hope of solution in a depressed economy. Whether victims of technology and their environment, as the Professor claims, or their own twisted natures, these blank-eyed wanderers are today's lepers, GPS anklets in lieu of bells, a festering wound in an age when literacy has been replaced by the facile intrusion of technology that feeds man's darkest urges in the anonymity of commerce: "There's no escape from under the causeway". Luan Gaines/2011.

The protagonist is a convicted "sex offender" [the quotes are appropriate, but I don't want to write a spoiler] who ends up living with a colony of other homeless sex offenders under a bridge in a large unnamed city. Sounds depressing, but the
young man has such imagination and depth of feeling that you are thoroughly and empathically involved. Great writing.

This is essentially a two-character novel that starts to gain traction about half-way through--when a subplot involving a quirky professor finally comes to life. Prior to that, the plot focuses on a 22-year old "sex offender" of questionable guilt whom the author portrays symapthetically. Consequently, the reader is given little reason to feel emotional concern for this character, who, despite his dire circumstances is portrayed as guileless, unusually resourceful, self-sufficient, and confident. Another annoyance is the repeated use of trite and archaic dialogue such as, "If you know what I mean." The net effect is an average reading experience that serves to distract and entertain at an acceptable level.

The author gives us descriptions of Florida's flora and weather and detailed physical settings that are beautifully and even lovingly described; unfortunately, his characters are crudely drawn and two-dimensional. The Professor is fat. And brilliant. Or so we are told. And the Kid is a vague sketch of a character. I don't think I've ever finished a novel (and yes, I did finish it!) with so little understanding or empathy for its principal characters. I cared more about the Kid's parrot and his dog.

And as for the the meta-fictional elements: they are tossed in randomly and awkwardly and would have been better left out (e.g. web sites addresses and authorial asides). Or they could have been added in an Afterword.

I've read some of Russell Banks's writing before, and I know he's capable of way more than he offers in this book. It's as if he was sleep-walking through it, just sort of wandering around a story idea that never really took shape. His characters are flat, the settings and dialogue unrealistic, and the point of the novel.....hmm. Mr. Banks knows how to tell a story, but he keeps that talent well-hidden here.

He does toss in a line from a Springsteen song and a rather gratuitous reference to the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, but there's not much else that caught this reader's attention.

The only element of the book worth noting is that he does make a case for the complexity of the definition of "sex offender." In this case, the young man who is convicted of a sex crime, and then ostracized from his community, is a very immature 22-year-old with a sad home life, who washed out of the Army early in his military career, isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, has zero self esteem and even fewer friends, and who then commits the "crime" of responding to the advances of a sexually precocious 14-year-old. Obviously, a 22-year-old man who arrives at the home of an underage girl with plans to have sex knows he's about to commit a crime, but he's reacting to what she set up, not deliberately cruising for children.

Believe me, I am no apologist for sexual predators. I think they should be thrown into a pit with ravenous wild animals. But, I know for a fact there are people out there--mainly young men--who made dumb but consensual decisions and who end up in jail and then on sex offender registries for the rest of their lives. They're not perverts who habitually stalk young girls...they're guys who made bad judgment calls. "The Kid" in this novel is one such hapless character.

But on the whole, my response to this book was as warm as the normal body temperature of The Kid's ill-fated pet iguana. Which is to say, it left me cold.

In this novel a young sex offender ("the Kid"), living in an encampment of his peers, is befriended by an outlandish professor with a shady past. The Professor purports to be doing a study, but switches to another agenda when activities from his past suddenly catch up with him. The Kid becomes a means for the doomed Professor to pass on sanitized memories of himself to his family.

I have some problems with this book, beginning with the characters. We are apparently expected to sympathize with the Kid, see him as positive despite his immersion in pornography and its attendant attitudes and language. (Sexual slang is pervasive throughout the book.) But keeping pets and an occasional loyalty do not eclipse serious offenses against society or flaws in character that permit them. The Professor, aside from being gluttonous and obese, is rather nebulous. His early life is clearly drawn, but the later "compartments" that catch up with him are only hinted at. Supposedly this reflects his self-regulated memory, but where does that leave us as readers? The Writer, who appears late in the book, seems to be the author himself, entering to carry on the missing Professor's role with the Kid.

Regarding plausibility, the Professor's initial meeting with the Kid was presented by him and the book as a coincidence, though it turns out that a librarian who once assisted the Kid is the Professor's wife. Did the wife relate the meeting to her husband, with him then researching the Kid and guessing where he was? This isn't mentioned. The setting-up of committees among the sex offenders seemed far-fetched, as did the bizarre and unexplained nature of his suicide or murder. The timing of the Professor's sudden demise--during his brief time with the Kid--struck me as overly coincidental.

What passes for affirmation for the Kid occurs after an outflow of moral casuistry from the Writer. Is an offender (or society) really served by telling him to forget good and bad, just choose something to believe and live by it? Looking at our world today, with its plethora of irrational or avaricious "causes," the answer would seem to be no.

This novel is certainly different, and can hold one's interest when it doesn't get bogged down in over-description or needless episodes (e.g., the offenders' committees). For the reasons cited above, however, I would not recommend it.