AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SKIN

A deep plunge into the depths of violence, faith, and love experienced by several Black Texan women at various stages of life as they consider how they have both wounded and been wounded by those they’ve loved.

Whether seen as a novel or three novellas linked by overlapping characters, Carr’s debut is by turns eloquent and raw, fantastical and realistic. Part I focuses on the unhappiness and regrets of middle-aged Nettie as she mourns the anniversary of her mother’s death many years earlier. Nettie describes herself as a member of the “generation of integrators” whose parents fought for civil rights and whose kids are disillusioned by the results. Long married to a man with whom she can no longer communicate, Nettie tries to escape loss and regret through gambling and drinking. Her only real solace is her friend Peaches, with whom she shares a nightly cigarette over the phone. Peaches’ daughter, Ketinah, is the link to Part II, concerning Ketinah’s friend Maya. Raised in comfort and well educated, she has never confronted the in-your-face violence her husband, Troy, knows all too well and hopes to escape by “assimilation” into a White, middle-class Houston neighborhood. Struggling with postpartum depression, Maya grows distraught over the barrage of news about Black people killed by police until her panic-stricken desire to protect her children slips toward madness. Ketinah herself narrates Part III, a tour de force that shifts from gritty realism to gothic otherworldliness (though it's sometimes overwritten). Ketinah, her mother, Peaches, grandmother Eloise, and two great aunts weather a storm together in a San Antonio house eating, bickering, drinking, and mourning loves lost until Eloise and Ketinah’s gift of "the sight,” an ability to see the dead, leads to dramatic revelations. Carr uses the eerie setup to express Eloise’s emotional wisdom based on faith in “Love. Ghosts. God.”

With vivid writing and characters, Carr's debut is sometimes brutal or sentimental, always passionate, never boring.