Lost memory of skin

The Resource Lost memory of skin
Label
Lost memory of skin
Statement of responsibility
Russell Banks
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
Suspended in a strangely modern day version of limbo, the young man at the center of this morally complex novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. A university sociologist of enormous size and intellect, he finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research on homelessness and recidivism among convicted sex offenders. The two men forge a tentative partnership, the Kid remaining wary of the Professor's motives even as he accepts the counsel and financial assistance of the older man. When the camp beneath the causeway is raided by the police, and later, when a hurricane all but destroys the settlement, the Professor tries to help the Kid in practical matters while trying to teach his young charge new ways of looking at, and understanding, what he has done. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Suddenly, the Kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision. In this novel the author examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. It probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion, a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim
Subject
Genre
Story line
Tone
Writing style
Character
Award
  • ALA Notable Book, 2012.
  • Booklist Editors' Choice 2011
  • New York Times Notable Book 2011
Cataloging source
BTCTA
Dewey number
813/.54
Index
no index present
LC call number
PS3552.A46
LC item number
L68 2011
Literary form
fiction
Target audience
adult

Context

Context of Lost memory of skin

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