Praise for Skins

‘Skins is a deserving winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2001 . . . Hay has created strong characters who have depth and lessons for the 21st century. A young writer to watch.’

The Press, Christchurch

‘In 1802, Flinders’s landscape artist William Westall drew a romantic pencil sketch of an uninhabited middle island that makes it look Arcadian. Hay’s achievement lies in populating the same place with characters, based on history, who transformed a panorama of paradise into hell on earth.’

The Weekend Australian

‘The great strength of Hay’s writing is its visceral quality: the detail with which she describes Dorothea kneading dough on roughly cured kangaroo skin; the misery of the cold kept at bay only by fire and insect-ridden skins; and the blood-splattered brutality of hunting expeditions for baby seal skins. If the drama and palpability of these scenes can at times seem overwhelming, their power is to immerse the reader in the rawness of Dorothea’s experience.’

Australian Book Review

‘Set in a world of desperation, squalor and violence, Skins combines a delicate feel for human character differences in contrast with the raw strength needed for survival in a brutal and sometimes brutish community.’

Katherine Cummings, Sydney Morning Herald

‘Hay is a tactile writer . . . Skins is a novel which operates by stealth, building its effects gradually, in layers.’

Danielle Wood, The Sunday Tasmanian

‘Skins is set on the islands off the West Australian coast, and draws upon historical fact to transform these islands into a theatre for the darker impulses of human nature . . . Hay reveals, gradually and with considerable acuity, the complexities embodied in any choice, and the delicate interplay of need that exists between the weak and the strong.’

James Bradley, Good Reading

‘Skins is an excellent first novel, tightly and evenly constructed, with an accessible, unobtrusive and unforced style . . . These themes make for compelling reading and the characters are so well constructed that the reader can’t help but be curious about their fate, even the most unlikable ones.’

Australian Bookseller and Publisher

‘Skins is a fascinating journey into Australian history.’

Melbourne Weekly Magazine

‘Hay has a striking ability to present anomalies in a way that illuminates them for readers to contemplate . . . the rhythm of her writing creates a tone that compliments the story. Hay has a gift for mirroring language to the events it conveys.’

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