A closeted, in the Edwardian sense of the word (which actually almost means the same thing as the more modern use of the word, to be sure.) Book collection valuer finds himself near the gloomy village of Ashbrittle (Which would have made a great title for the novel.) and an encounter with a screaming desperate woman literally in the clutches of a nutty professor. He finds his previously orderly world turned on its head as he sets about trying to set her free. Peter Benson manages a very entertaining mash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sheridan Le fanu, elevating it to so much more than an Edwardian folly. More than a few of his mercurially constructed sentences stream of into poetry of composition. it never feels forced and almost conversational at times, in that a spoken sentence meanders in its own dreamy abstraction.
I imagine Peter Benson might tire having pointed out obvious similarities with the Hammer film The Reptile, in that at its narrative heart is the sad tale of a young woman turned into a vaguely reptilian hybrid, even though the creature at the black heart of the film is a hissing, biting monstrosity while the one in Isabel's Skin is an equally decent young person horribly violated by some one no better than they ought to be. Its the period, the striking optic of a woman of that era, dressed as she would be, with the skin of a reptile that really reminds one of The Reptile's echo. And it is a nice excuse, were any one needed, to reprint a still of the much missed Jacqueline Pearce at the very peak of her star quality. Ms Pearce made two films with Hammer filmed back to back; Plague Of The Zombies and The Reptile. A superlative double bill.
Peter Benson's book is by turns tragic and dreamily unsettling.
Much like the strange days we find ourselves in.
