Thin Skin

March 1, 2023

Following National Book Award finalist My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Shapland's Thin Skin examines our entanglement in the world. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from June 26, 2023
National Book Award finalist Shapland (My Autobiography of Carson McCullers) explores the porous boundary between the individual and the wider world in these exhilarating essays. After suffering a summer of severe rashes, Shapland was diagnosed with “thin skin”—she’s missing the layer of epidermis that “keeps the bad stuff out and holds moisture in,” giving her a hypersensitivity to environmental pollutants. Cleverly, she uses this diagnosis as a metaphor to meditate on the individual’s “utter physical enmeshment with every other being on the planet.” Her inquiry takes her from the sands of Los Alamos, N.Mex., where she interviews Indigenous activists from communities riven with ailments caused by radiation left over from the Manhattan Project, to the aisles of Anthropologie, where she ruminates on capitalism’s tendency to encourage a materialistic view of the world that privileges property and ownership above other types of relations. In “Strangers on a Train,” Shapland reflects on how “cultural narratives” affect individuals, describing how the fear she sometimes feels for her safety while travelling alone is the legacy of a societal tendency to view women as in need of saving: “As a white woman I am not an agent, I am biding my time until victimhood.” It’s hard not to marvel at how the author draws unexpected conclusions from a diverse array of anecdotes, illuminating the profound ways in which individuals and the world shape each other. This is a gem.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
A distinguished essayist explores the permeability of human bodies--including her own--to the modern world and its vagaries. In her second book, following the acclaimed My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Shapland transforms "systemic sensitivity" into a lens through which to consider human fragility as it manifests via bodily ailments, considerations of gender, and excess consumerism. Her first piece muses on physical and psychological vulnerability. The author has suffered from migraines and chronic pain, and she was also diagnosed with skin that lacks "ceramides, which keeps the bad stuff out and holds the moisture in." These and other conditions forced her into hyperawareness of how thin her protection was against the pandemic as well as radioactive contaminants present in her adopted home of Santa Fe. In "Strangers on a Train," Shapland considers gender vulnerability, discussing the meaning of moving through misogynist society as a (White) female. Because she fears capture by hostile elements, she becomes "a hostage to my own safety" as well as "an agent of the larger mission of the state," which weaponizes women's perceived vulnerability against marginalized communities. The author expands her exploration of gender in "The Meaning of Life," in which she examines childbearing in post-Roe America. The choice to have children is "always political, always overshadowed by a set of power structures" that determine "what choice is even possible." By remaining childless--as Shapland and her queer partner have chosen to be--women become heretics against the capitalist system. A chastened slave to consumerism, Shapland observes that under capitalism, "people die by my hand every day." Endlessly desiring and buying goods puts her on the receiving end of merchandise created by people living in misery, making her an unwilling accomplice to capitalistic violence. Breathtaking in their sharp synthesis of a variety of ideas and experiences, Shapland's essays are a truth-telling balm for mind, body, and spirit. An eloquent and vibrantly lucid collection.

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