Both texts are also interested in how altered bodies move backwards and forwards across the boundary between human and nonhuman animal and how physical alterations effect psychological ones. Under the Skin bears remarkable affinities with this text in the sense that, in both, metamorphoses are effected by surgery rather than by magic or accident. 1 It could thus also be read in the context of the tradition of sf that develops out of H.G. Despite Faber’s denial, however, Under the Skin, with its story of an alien species farming humans on Earth for meat, is clearly science fiction. It also shares affinities with such non-sf texts as Jack London’s The Call of the Wild (1903), Dante’s Inferno, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999), Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation (1997), Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (2001), Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi (2002), and Will Self’s Great Apes (1997). Marketed as a mainstream text, Under the Skin can be read in the context of a number of other contemporary mainstream works interested in the relationships between human and nonhuman animals, such as J.M. Under the Skin (2000) is the horrifying best-selling first novel of the Dutch-born, Australian-raised, Scottish-resident, contemporary novelist Michel Faber.

Sarah Dillon “It’s a Question of Words, Therefore”: Becoming-Animal in Michel Faber’s Under the Skin

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