Prostitue and drug users tells us the true grim story (In My Skin: A Memoir - Kate Holden)

Member Name: mickeyhunt

Product:	In My Skin: A Memoir - Kate Holden
Date:	11/08/09 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping and shocking, but ultimately uplifting

Disadvantages: It kept me up late

I have just finished this book and it is what I call a real page turner. I really enjoyed it, which is a difficult thing to say about such a dark book.

Kate is a well brought up quiet and shy girl from a loving and happy family. No abuse, no divorces or major issues. You do get the feeling that she has a few issues with herself, perhaps feelings of worthlessness, although how and why she acquires these feelings has is not at all clear. She is intelligent and goes to Uni to study and gets a degree in history of art. After Uni she gradually drifts into a bad crowd and ends up as a heroin addict and then the spiral is downwards as the drug takes over her life and estranges her from her family and friends, till she ends up on the street selling her body. This is not unexpected as it is clearly given in the synopsis of the book. What is unexpected is the frankness with which she describes her relationships with her clients, her needs, their needs and her day to day life on the streets and later in brothels. It also described her personal love life initially with James who she truly loved, but lost because he had to get himself clean and then with Robbie who I think that she clung to for company and loved but not in the same way as she loved James. This is not a porn book. It is not written to titillate, but merely to inform and I think as a form of catharsis for Ms Holden.

I found the book difficult to put down and read it very quickly, staying up till the wee hours last night to finish the story. How I felt about the book and Kate is complex. I struggled to find sympathy for her. I could feel the horror of the situations that she found her self in and I did often feel some pity, but not sympathy, not until towards the end when she was working in more relative safety in the higher class brothel. I found some similarities in her character with mine, in that she was shy (even though she became a hooker) and that came across very clearly that she was so shy and that she often felt that she was outside of things looking in and I have often felt like that in my life, although I have never turned to drugs. I liked and disliked her at the same time. I think that I liked the sense of humour that she seemed to retain all the way through, but her selfishness irritated me. She clearly saw how she was hurting all the people around her and although she tried several times to get clean she just kept going back for one more "taste". Perhaps this is the true damage that heroin does, by damaging your ability to care what you do to your loved ones. From the way that she writes it seems that she gradually found all her caring about anyone else being numbed over.

James her first serious partner clearly loved her, but recognised that is was a destructive love for both of them and that to get clean he had to leave her. At first I could not understand why he was leaving her, till she met Robbie and then I realised that she was dragging James back down when he was really trying to get clean just as later Robbie would be dragging her back down.

I did not feel any sympathy at all towards her partner Robbie. He was a user, not just a drug user but a people user who allowed her to go and sell her body while he just claimed dole. I found his role in her life distasteful, his childish rants about her having no time for him because she was always at work, but still happy to take the fixes that the money brought. He was a parasite and whilst his addiction gave him some reason for this, I don't think is excused his behaviour.

It is a very well written and thought provoking book that leaves you examining what you would do in some of the same situations. In reality I know I would never end up in that situation, because I think that however shy and uncomfortable I was in my own skin when I was young, I have now come to a comfortable accommodation with who and what I am. I think that Kate reaches this place at the end of the book and then finds it surprisingly relatively easy to pull herself out of the addiction, just as if she has outgrown it. I did feel a bit cheated at the end, as I wanted to know a bit more about what she was going to do with her life and what happened to both James and Robbie.

I think that anyone who thinks that they may like to try heroin should read this book and then think again. It does not glamorise the life she led, showing it all the grimy detail. That is exactly how her life came over as grimy. It also shows that no matter what you family do to help it is only you in the end that can get you out and back into a normal life.

Summary: A warts and all account of a drug users fight back to real life.