A Man's Skin

[diva_samodiva]

 A Man's Skin is a graphic novel by French author Hubert. The narrative tells the story of Bianca, a Renaissance-era woman of marrying age, who wishes to be able to meet her husband, Giovanni, before their wedding day. Her mother, a conservative Christian woman, is against that. So is her brother - a servant of the Lord, who's growing more fanatical by the minute. It's only her aunt (or godmother? I don't remember) that reaches out to help, by taking her to live with her before the wedding and showing her Lorenzo.

Lorenzo is... a piece of skin. I'm not joking. Traditionally, the women in their family have had  Lorenzo for generations and when the time for marriage came, they each got their turn wearing the skin and finding out a bit about the world of the men. Now it was Bianca's turn, who wasted no second getting the skin on and going to meet with Giovanni. At first she's quite disappointed with him, but overtime grows to like and eventually even love him.

The trouble only begins when Giovanni returns those feelings of love - except he falls in love with Lorenzo, and not with Bianca! The two men begin a love affair destined to end in tragedy. All this while Bianca's brother's fanatical reign over the city keeps getting stronger and stronger.

Positives:
1. LGBTQ+ themes all around

The men have a hidden bar, which during the day is your typical macho gathering place, but during the night accomodates those same men's drag shows. Gay men having to hide their true selves and enter marriage. Open relationships. Gender non-conformity. I'll admit that I only randomly found this book, so everything I listed off here managed to delight me in its own way. 

2. Exploration of female sexuality 

It is only after she dons Lorenzo's skin that Bianca becomes able to explore her sexuality as a woman. She finds herself enjoying that, as well, and begins asking herself why she shouldn't be experiencing the same pleasures even without Lorenzo? 

The book is about her internal and external fight to gain those same rights. It's also about her becoming comfortable with herself as a woman. She can experience the same things a man can, and is no longer ashamed of that.

I can't really make a good analysis on that, so I'll just talk of my favourite scene. In the beginning Bianca is really shy about herself and her body. As Lorenzo, though, he meets a gay artist who offers to paint him. While posing for the artist, Lorenzo finds himelf nude and suddenly unashamed. He switches poses, shows off his body, and overall enjoys himself, much to the dismay of a jealous Giovanni. So, the artist turns Lorenzo into Ganymede for his painting.

3. The world is more diverse than what first meets the eye

Growing up, my family could be quite conservative for some things relationship-related. They certainly didn't deprive me of education on human anatomy, but they had the same attitude that some of the characters had towards female sexuality. Sex in marriage is just a method to have a child, not meant to be pleasurable. Pleasure you can derive from travel, education, not the opposite sex. Those incredibly normal, and usually emotional things, were presented as devoid of any feeling. When I got to a certain age, it turned out they didn't really believe that - it was just their way of shielding me from a world of disappointments. 

Because of all that I could really relate to Bianca's POV. Having only been told so little of the world, she saw it with dulled colours, more grey than not. Getting to be Lorenzo really opened her eyes to so much she hadn't suspected existed. Or, if she had suspected it existed, then certainly not that it did right under her nose. It sends the message that for as long as humans have existed, some of them have  been queer, and have managed to find others like them, despite all the restrictions out there. Whereas towards the beginning of the book Bianca's opposal of the world she lives in consists of her asking questions, towards the end she has turned into a true rebel and revolutionary, using the help of Lorenzo and the friends they made along the way. 

I really, really liked the casual way Hubert and Zanzim draw a parallel between the way she saw the world previously, and her new evolved view. One example of that is during a Sunday service in the church. As Bianca takes a glance at all the respectable men around her, she realises she'd been with them the night before at a drag show. Except now they also had to wear the same mask of normality.

That's one question that remains unresolved for a big part of the book. Who is the most truthful version of her - Bianca, or Lorenzo? Bianca is who she identifies as in the end, yet for the longest time Bianca is nothing but a mask of propriety she shows the people around her. On the other hand, while Lorenzo may quite literally be someone else's skin, it is as him that she manages to learn so much about herself, her sexuality and the world around her, and starts wanting to change it. 

3. Top-notch art

The illustrator of the novel is Zanzim, and boy did this man give it all he's got. The very first thing that caught my attention is the style of the cover. From then on, he manages to bring each character to life with the way he draws them. There's a "fluidity" of sorts in the way he draws the different panels - I've no other way to describe it, really. Some graphic novels really suffer from a lack of that - the art fails to have you engaged with the story. Not with the way Zanzim drew, though - it gets you to mentally live through the character's experiences, and grow with them. 




4. Portrayal of the church

Once again, the author did quite a good job at depicting how involved the church was in the lives of the people. How it not only policed and controlled everything, but also got people to join it, distorting their view of the world. It's most clearly shown in Bianca's brother, who, so brainwashed by the church, begins to see even his own mother's touch as sinful. 

The main opposition in the book is between Lorenzo and Bianca's brother. Lorenzo is the rebel who fights against the wratch of the church, who destroys public property, who gets himself painted as Ganymede, along with Zeus. The brother, on the other hand, is little more than the one who set that same painting on fire.

The Church isn't shown as the preserver of culture and love, but as the destroyer of such. Paintings, sculptures, parades, real human beings - all those get demolished by it, in the name of a deity that's beginning to sound not all that omnibenevolent. The uprising of the people of all classes against the Church really brings the reader to the nature of Renaissance - one of change. 

5. Unexpected ending

...aaaand that's where I'll close my mouth

Negatives:

1. The dialogue felt a bit unrealistic at times

I personally don't see it as that big of a drawback. I can probably count on one hand the times where I disliked the dialogue, and even then, I'd need to take into consideration that what I read was a translation of the original. For all I know, those phrases could have simply been a bit troublesome to translate if the author used some word that carried a nuance that's hard to transfer to English. 

2. I... can't think of anything else xD

Damn it, A Man's Skin! Can't indulge in my favourite hobby cause of you! (My favourite hobby being, as you all most likely will have guessed, is complaining)

Last Thoughts:
I read a lot of reviews on goodreads saying the book's good, but not something they'd recommend to a friend, so you should probably take this into consideration if you want to read it. I personally find it great, so if it's me you want to get your next graphic novel recommended from - then definitely go with this one!