Via the play of genre and form, then, Under the Skin offers a narrative of the political recognition of nonhuman species that exceeds significantly the established story of enlightened and reasoned recognition of their rights.

Eventually, she comes to sense that subjection, alienation and bodily vulnerability align her with the human animals she kills, and she finally stops. It is gradually revealed that a commitment to species exceptionalism is Isserley's flawed vision of enlightenment, her protection against the social degradation that has blighted her life. Complicating the book’s politics of species, however, the science fiction and gothic genre effects in the novel deliver a plot that commands the reader to sympathize with a protagonist who enacts murderous views about humans that are analogous to ideas that underpin human use of animals in the meat industry. In the novel, Isserley’s antagonist is Amlis, a liberationist activist who presents classically liberal arguments for the extension of liberty to the humans. Faber’s careful focalization of this story through Isserley allows for a subtle, ambiguous and counterintuitive inquiry into the nature of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. In an astonishing reversal of species fortunes, she captures human males who are prepared underground and slaughtered as meat to be consumed by a social elite at home. Under the Skin is the story of Isserley, a woman who escapes a socially and ecologically ravaged planet by working secretly in remote Scotland for an opaque corporate concern.

Isserley under the skin