Lost Memory of Skin

In 2005, a Florida law prohibiting sex offenders from being anywhere with 2,500 feet of children resulted in the makeshift construction of a shantytown beneath a causeway that quickly filled with homeless convicts. Taking this as his starting point, Russell Banks sets out in his latest novel, Lost Memory of Skin, to tell a tale of lost innocence as seen through the lives of his two archetypal characters, the Kid and the Professor. Branded a sex offender—though the only thing he's really guilty of is being confused and naïve—the Kid has set up his life under the causeway only to have the Professor intrude on him under the pretense of conducting a sociological study of the linkages between sex crimes and homelessness. The Kid and the Professor serve as familiar foils for each other—the under-educated youth who's smarter and cagier then one might think, and the intellectually superior adult who's vulnerable in ways he can't perceive—but the interplay between them as they grow closer is as corny as it is moving. When the Professor's secret life begins to catch up with him, the plot finally thickens but the drama doesn't rise to the occasion to match it. Deeply researched and bristling with convincing detail, Lost Memory of Skin winds up feeling slight and sentimental though its heart is in the right place.