Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel [B0395]

2011 HCDJ. The acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable results. Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor's motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man. Lost Memory of Skin probes 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.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "The plot sounds like it would be a downer, but Lost Memory is full of unexpected moments of hope, comic situations and just great storytelling. One minute, you're shaking your head at society's injustices and hypocrisies; the next minute, you're smiling at the Kid's resilience and hard-won survival. Nothing predictable about this novel."; "Once again, through fiction, an author has made me think deeply about a segment of society that has been marginalized out of society's tendency to paint with a broad brush an uncomfortable issue."; "Woah. I haven't read anything like this yet. Neither have you."