* * Daily Mail * * The fantastic is so nicely played against the day-to-day that one feels the strangeness of both. A refreshing reminder of how good fiction can make our own world seem alien.

Told in sparse, often beautiful prose, Under the Skin defies genre, swerving from parable to science fiction and questioning what makes us human, how we connect to each other, and how we define and treat the 'other'. To describe the bizarre scenario behind this novel would make it sound absurd but in Michel Faber's hands it is a compelling and darkly disorientating tale. * * Mail on Sunday * * Edgy, accomplished debut. It is audacious, fascinating, repellent and quite unlike anything I have ever read. * * Herald * * Astonishingly, this is Michel Faber's first novel.

It is the best first novel of the year and a worthy successor to Faber's short stories. Its triumph, however, is that it plays on the mind long after a first reading. Michel Faber's Under the Skin passes this test with ease, or should that be unease? Faber builds a credible thriller on what seems the shakiest of premises. * * The Week * * 'One measure of a book is its stickability, its ability to remain in the mind long after being read. * * Observer * * Under the Skin is a shocking and fantastical take on modern humanity. Recalling writers such as Jim Crace and Russell Hoban, Under the Skin, like Faber's short stories, is an extremely assured and imaginative work. * * Kate Atkinson * * brilliantly compressed drama of threat and ambiguity. * * Guardian * * A wonderful book - painful, lyrical, frightening, brilliant. This is a man who could give Conrad a run at writing the perfect sentence. * * Sunday Times * * The real triumph is Faber's restrained, almost opaque prose. * * Daily Telegraph * * Profound and disturbing. * * Independent on Sunday * * Tenses and prods the reader up a plethora of literary blind alleys before hauling them screaming towards its final, thrilling destination. Would that more first novels were as adventurous or as funky and daring in their conception.

Under the skin faber