The Book of Skin by Steven Connor, Reaktion Books, 拢19.95, ISBN 1861891938 Reviewed by Laura Spinney
AFTER John Horwood was hanged for the murder of Eliza Balsum in 1821, the account of his arrest, trial and execution was bound in his skin. The idea was that his own bodily binding would authenticate the tale more powerfully than the usual thumbprint or cross by which an illiterate might attest to a legal document.
Steven Connor is obsessed with the notion that the soul hovers around the skin, in a 鈥渟himmer of possibility at the fingers鈥� ends鈥�, yet paradoxically that the skin should not be considered a part of the body. In The Book of Skin he asserts that skin is more than just a boundary, it is 鈥渁n actively unfolding and self-forming organism鈥�, one that moulds itself not only to its inhabitant鈥檚 character, but also to the mores of the epoch in which he or she lives.
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