At the centre of Aliya Whiteley’s The Loosening Skin (Unsung Stories, £9.99) is an intriguing premise. In a world very much like our own, people shed their skins every seven years and, along with them, their pasts, feelings and associations: their old lives are, effectively, replaced. However, a new drug, Suscutin, allows users to maintain their skins and so retain their current life. Rose Allington, a former bodyguard for actor Max Black with whom she had a troubled love affair, has a rare medical condition that causes her to moult more often than average – so she undergoes rapid and regular emotional upheavals. When Max comes back into her life, wanting her to help him track down an old skin of his that has been stolen, Rose is forced to reassess everything. The Loosening Skin works as a quirky new weird thriller, but its triumph lies in the way Whiteley uses the metaphor of shedding skin to examine the tortured process of love and attachment.
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