Mysterious Skin

Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim is a book that is also a movie, which I learned after I tweeted that I read the book.  Oh yeah, want to follow me on twitter?  TeEllett, have fun.  I do tweet when I finish a RA Favorite Book.  This was a very difficult read as it deals with the issue of child abuse.  Two characters (Brian Lackey and Neil McCormick) are tied together through the abuse they received at the hands of their Little League baseball coach at the age of 7.  It wasn’t until a decade later that the two lives were brought together through the process of “working through the abuse” by one of the lead characters.  The book is written in chapter format from the perspective of the various characters; yet, with each chapter, the story is moving in a linear fashion.  The actual “architecture of the book” (the flow) is done exceedingly well.  Upon reflection, I actually have warmed up to the story much more.  While the topical area is far from yesterday’s read, I thought the author was able to demonstrate the power of the abuse – deeply hidden within the confines of someone’s soul so much that they can’t remember and move forward.  It is through years of trying to understand what happened that one afternoon where he woke up with a bloody nose in the crawl space under his porch that he begins to realize that he wasn’t abducted by UFOs.  Brian meets with a self-proclaimed UFO abduction specialist and is convinced that is what happened to him until he puts together events related to the day of the game.  Neil on the other hand is gay and has responded through the abuse as a young male willing to turn a trick to make some easy cash.  These two lives collide when Brian is introduced to Eric Preston, a young man who is infatuated with Neil, who left the Midwest town to make it in NYC.  Eric brings the two together at the conclusion of the book.  What happens is a scene that displays some compassion and confusion in dealing with abuse.  As I mentioned, it was a difficult initial start to the book.  Heim’s characters were on-point and getting to the emotional side was easy but not one to warm up initially.  Well written, liked but not sure I would add to my “best list”.