n  "I am hurt...in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hands and eyes and breath are a part of me."n

This book seemed like a less sophisticated ancestor of Tender Morsels. I got a bundle deal on several of Mckinley's works and so I went into this novel with no idea what it was about.

It was a tiny bit of a shock.

I really enjoyed this book. It inspired a deeply emotional response. Recently, I've been less interested in plot (and to some degree, character) and more interested in two questions; does this novel make me think? And/ or does this novel make me feel?

This book gave me all the feelz.

I know it probably seems inappropriate to be taking such a light hearted tone with such a serious book but I mean it with absolute honesty. I was very emotional reading this book.

I also felt that the message of the book was important; You can survive sexual abuse, even thou it changes you irrevocably, it is possible to live despite it.

n  "Her fingers crawled upwards and touched the outer curve of her breast, and the fingers paused, quaking in fear; but after the moment, despite the panic trying to break out of its shadows and seize her mind, she told her fingers, go on. This is my body. I reclaim my body for myself: for my use, for my understanding, for my kindness and care. Go on. And the fingers walked cautiously on, over the curiously muscleless, faintly ridged flesh, cooler than the rest of the body, across the tender nipple, into the deep cleft between, and out onto the breast that lay limp and helpless and hardly recognizable as round, lying like a hunting trophy over her other arm. Mine, she thought. My body. It lives on the breaths I breathe and the food I eat; the blood my heart pumps reaches all of me, into all my hidden crevices, from my scalp to my heels."n

Tonally, the book is written in a dreamy manner. This is very much a fairytale. The original tale it was based on "Donkeyskin" was much less clear with regard to how it turned out for the girl. The King who she married in the origin tale was (I believe) deliberately obfuscated. It was a story that was meant to speak to girls and women trapped in sexually abusive relationships with men who had complete power over them.

McKinley (thankfully) choose to tell the more optimistic version of the tale. It is meant to be allegorical, don't expect searing realism.

There is one other thing I wanted to comment on. Another reviewer stated that "McKinley's view of trauma - rape, incest, miscarriage - is absolute crap and offensive to people who have actually been through those things. I couldn't believe she tried to romanticize such horrible things. She told the story very well, as she thought of it; unfortunately all the sentiments were contrived and false."

Being a surviver of familial CSA I find this sort of commentary absolute crap and offensive. Some of the behaviours and events McKinley described spoke to me personally about my own experience. Other aspects didn't. I spoke about this inmy review of Carve the Mark. Your unique experience of something does not make you the arbitrator of all possible responses to that trauma/ event.

If a novel is factually incorrect or it treats major traumas like no big deal then by all means rip the author to shreds. But if you didn't like the way an author handled how a character responded to their trauma because it didn't match your idea of how they should respond- you probably need to take a look a second look at your own perspective. People are complex and not everyone responds in the same way.

What was particularly baffling for me with regard to this criticism is that McKinley speaks in metaphors about very, very common responses to sexual abuse- by blocking it from your mind and the very common result- complete social isolation and crippling, self- imposed loneliness. Deerskin's humiliation, horror and blood loss in the harrowing climax of the novel was an authentic metaphor for how survivors often feel when they finally acknowledge the abuse. The fact that Deerskin only told the truth once another young girl was in danger is also very common in adult survivors who maintained the secret throughout childhood, often up until the point that they have their own children and realise they have to protect them from the perpetrator in their family. Additionally, the devotion people had towards her father, the victim- blaming that occurred and her guilt were all common experiences for people who have experienced CSA.

The only point at which McKinley misstepped was by using magic to physically heal Deerskin. Returning Deerskin's body to it's "unspoiled" state, was an example of where over- romanticising the perfect female form ran counter to the theme and tone of the book.

There were a few other minor problems with the book, it was repetitive, and I think it would be rather too charitable to assume McKinley did this deliberately. Although dealing with CSA can often feel endless and repetitive, I don't think she genuinely intended for the novel to sometimes feel that way. The story was also predictable, but when reading a retelling does that ever really matter?

This was a touching book. It lacked the sophistication of some of the other retellings that deal with sexual assault but it also ended on a happy note which was cathartic as a reader. If you enjoy fiction that delves into painful experiences in a fairytale framework, this is one of the best examples out there.

Well worth the read.

I have hit page 92 and I am officially done reading this book. My spidey-sense was telling me all along that something was not right, but I clung to the naive hope that I was wrong about where it was going. Not so.

I am not in any way averse to dark themes, but this whole incest/rape thing just seemed gratuitous. I understand it's based on a creepy old fairy tale, but neither the main character nor her father were believable. I didn't really see overarching reason for their actions at any point.

Add to that the ponderous fairy-tale language and the obsession with the dog, which was not interesting to me...yeah no thanks.

And here I was, excited to treat myself to a "trashy fantasy book"...I am glad for the other reviews on this site, as they've confirmed what I've been thinking, and now I won't have to waste any more time.

2/5; 2 stars; C

There were so many things I liked about this book but in the end, the balance was off and I felt disappointed. I liked the character of Deerskin and I loved the dogs but the story dragged in several places and ended too abruptly. Xe Sands was an excellent narrator.

Beautifully written and haunting. It was a bit difficult to get through at times and I almost gave up a couple of times. I am glad I didn’t, the story was amazing.

Un viatge preciós ple de tendresa i natura. Un viatge que travessa un dolor fosc i amarg, un dolor que la Lissar exhala amb l'amor de la Ceniza, la seva galga. L'amistat i la residencie d'elles dues és pura, es fonen l'una amb l'altra.

El ritme i la pausa de "Piel de Ciervo" és com batec cíclic de la lluna, un batec salvatge que esclata.

M'he convertit en una més de la família de la Lissar, en una germana, en una amiga

4.5 stars rounded up because even among the darkness and the heinousness of the catalyst of Deerskin’s tale, I was glued to this story, the titular character and some of the most interesting dogs I’ve ever read about. Superb writing.

Some things grew no less with time. Some things were absolutes. Some things could not be gotten over, gotten round, forgotten, forgiven, made peace with, released.

Robin's darkest fairytale retelling. Not for kids.

Spoilers to follow:

After the death of her mother the queen, Princess Lissla is completely ignored for years by her father, the king. Her one companion is her dog, Ash, a condolence gift from Prince Ossia, and the two are inseparable.
As Lissla grows, she comes to resemble her mother both in looks and in beauty. When her father sees her, he insists that she must marry him, to fulfill his promise to her mother that he marry only a woman as beautiful as she was.
On Lissla's 17th birthday, he breaks into her room, and rapes her.
She escapes with Ash, and while she heals outwardly, inwardly she is destroyed. She has a miscarriage, and the trauma of everything that has happened to her transforms her into Deerskin.
She becomes known by the people as Moonwoman, the gentle soul who works with animals. She travels to another kingdom, and there finds work training the dogs for the castle. Eventually, she finds love and a new life.
The story is both disturbing, and listless. It is hard to identify with Lissla/Deerskin, and understand her passivity. I don't think McKinley had quite got the hang of bringing characters to life yet. The best part is Lissla's relationship with her beloved Ash, where the love for the dog shines through.
Only for McKinley completists.

This book established McKinley as one of my favorite writers of all time. I read it while trapped in a wonderful waterfront house during a snowstorm with a bunch of my relatives. At one point I reluctantly offered to come join the conversation, but my mom, in one of those wonderful intuitive moments of hers, saw how engrossed I was in the book and told me to stay put, so I got to finish it with the snow falling on the Sound outside and a huge plate of homemade gingersnaps at my elbow.

Uh. None of this will help you decide whether you want to read the book. It's McKinley at her lushest, language-wise: the sentences wrap around and around until you're dizzy, but somehow you never lose track of the story. Which is about a princess forced to flee her home with her faithful dog, and about the recovery process the two of them go through, strongly influenced by their relationship with one another. And the dog, Ash, is extremely, pleasingly doglike.

WARNING: This book contains a brutal rape scene near the beginning, which is what you spend the rest of the book recovering from with the princess and her dog.

"If a dog could have a sense of humor, as Ash manifestly did, could she not also have a sense of irony? Lissar knew that at heart she believed that a good dog was capable of almost anything..."

I don't think I've reread this one since high school. Revisiting it was intense, because it's a very intense book: trauma and recovery and myth and pain, but it's all rendered so beautifully.

Nobody else writes fairytales the way McKinley writes fairytales. Her worlds are so utterly the Fairyland of fairy tales, and yet they don't seem generic in the way that many do. Her prose is so exquisitely suited to fairytale retellings, and the way she draws a scene is so delicious.

I really don't think that this book would be published as a YA novel today, both because of its subject matter (the cesspit that is YA Twitter would freak the hell out) and because McKinley's prose and style is too intricate and...dense, in a good way. How can she write so clearly and straightforwardly and yet also feel dense? I don't know, but I love it. I'd forgotten how long and twisty her sentences can be; I was aware that I love long and twisty sentences, but I don't think I realized till this reread of this particular book just how much that must be the result of imprinting on McKinley's prose so much as a kid. (Does that mean I can thank McKinley for my love of Faulkner? What a funny thought!)

There's always a worry when you reread an author you loved as a kid that her works won't hold up now that you're an adult. It's such a relief to know that McKinley still won't let me down.

(Also I gasped out loud when I saw the reference to Aerin. I'd forgotten that was there!)

(Also also: McKinley pretty much only knows how to write one climactic scene, but I can forgive her for that because it's always pretty cathartic. She certainly has her leitmotifs, and if you don't like one of her books, you probably won't like any of them; fortunately for me, I share many of her hangups and the ones I don't share, I can go along with.)

No sé bien lo que acabo de leer pero la belleza ha sido inaudita. Casi tanto como el dolor que se esconden en estas páginas.

Imagina este libro como la versión de un cuento que conoces pero con un giro oscuro. Imagina que una vez llegada a la vida adulta, hubiese algún tipo de mensaje capaz de consolar a un corazón lleno de sombras.

Piel de ciervo es una novela de fantasía. Es un cuento de hadas revisado, reescrito y convertido en algo que puede tener una validez absoluta.

Esta novela gira en torno al cuerpo, al dolor y al trauma. Brilla levemente en los espacios privados de un personaje que tras un acto brutal contra su cuerpo y su persona, intenta recomponerse con lo poco que tiene.

Es una novela sobre el amor que nos ofrecen los animales. Sobre las segundas oportunidades que nos damos a nosotros mismos para volver a caminar. Es una historia que lleva dentro una serie de instrucciones para perdonarnos, en un entendimiento mucho más amplio de nosotros mismos.

Mucho tiene que suceder para que Piel de ciervo no se convierta en mi novela favorita de 2024. Porque pocas cosas he leído con esta profundidad, esta delicadeza y este espacio seguro para recomponer lo que otros creían que estaba roto e inservible.

16 March 2015: $1.99 on Kindle

4 March 2015: $4.99 on Kindle

SPOILER ALERT!

I was disappointed, not only in Robin McKinley's writing, but in the actual story. It was interesting how the girl dealt with her rape, but unrealistic and VERY flimsy. Who wouldn't want to forget about being raped? I was hoping to find a heroine who actually dealt with her life rather than forgetting about what happened by sleeping it off for 5 years.

I used to love Robin McKinley, but after the last few books of hers I have read, am getting really disappointed. She's an author whose first books are her best - not the last. It's like she thinks she's too good for an editor and just throws every random thought into her book without bothering to tie it all together.