The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

 

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

The rundown: Decades ago in a Pacific Northwest hospital, Betty was born with cobalt blue skin on the same day the Rummanis’ centuries-old, legendary blue soap factory is bombed in Palestine. Today, Betty sits at the grave of her beloved Aunt Nuha, Rummani family matriarch, faced with a decision: should she follow the woman she loves to another country, or stay in the only country she’s ever known? Having read her aunt’s journals and unraveled the secrets of her complicated life, Betty finds her answer.

The review: This book is strange and lovely. One of those books that, when you find out it’s a debut, stuns you. It’s so many things, and I’m still impressed, months after having read it, by how confidently Cypher conveys and explores them all. SKIN is epic in its construction of a mythology of sorts of the exiled Rummani family, anchored in blue soap and later the blue skin of a baby girl, following it from Palestine to the Pacific Northwest across generations. It’s intimate both in feel (Cypher uses direct address storytelling: Betty speaks directly to her deceased aunt) and in its focus on the interior lives of four of the Rummani women. Grandmother, aunt, mother, daughter. Nothing about it is straightforward, grounded as it is in oral storytelling traditions, such as nonlinear narrative and fables, and the half-truths that families are made of. We, like Betty, are looking for answers, for understanding in the revelations of Aunt Nuha’s journal. And it all comes together so, so beautifully. 

Goes well with: They’re very different tonally and stylistically, but Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses explores very similar themes and a similar setting.