Kate Holden was born in Melbourne in 1972. She completed an Honours degree in classics and literature at the University of Melbourne and a graduate diploma in professional writing and editing. In My Skin is her first book.
* In My Skin is the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material, subverting popular assumptions about addiction and prostitution while making the extraordinary seem commonplace and the ordinary deeply alluring. The subject matter, fascinating though it is, is secondary. Such are her powers to tap into the universal while telling a cracking good tale, Kate Holden could make the story of a tongue-tied troglodyte thrilling. Guardian * This surprising trajectory, along with its searing intellectual and emotional honesty and the quality of the writing, easily sets In My Skin apart from most other my-substance-abuse-hell memoirs. Independent * Her narrative is unwaveringly honest: she does not gloss over the brutality of some of her clients, but towards others she feels generosity, sympathy, lust and even love. Her writing is fluent, lyrical and inventive. This is a complex, thought-provoking and brilliantly unsettling book. New Statesman * Holden does what writers are supposed to do: challenges herself to examine the pressures that led her to live a life that, to put it kindly, would seem countercultural to most of us. She presents her own and, by extension, women's sexuality less as being victimised by prostitution than as predatory and mercenary, as a career chosen and developed. She frankly describes the euphoria of drugs, of turning five or six tricks a night, and the added pleasure of reckoning the money that she earned. The Times
* In My Skin is the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material, subverting popular assumptions about addiction and prostitution while making the extraordinary seem commonplace and the ordinary deeply alluring. The subject matter, fascinating though it is, is secondary. Such are her powers to tap into the universal while telling a cracking good tale, Kate Holden could make the story of a tongue-tied troglodyte thrilling. Guardian * This surprising trajectory, along with its searing intellectual and emotional honesty and the quality of the writing, easily sets In My Skin apart from most other my-substance-abuse-hell memoirs. Independent * Her narrative is unwaveringly honest: she does not gloss over the brutality of some of her clients, but towards others she feels generosity, sympathy, lust and even love. Her writing is fluent, lyrical and inventive. This is a complex, thought-provoking and brilliantly unsettling book. New Statesman * Holden does what writers are supposed to do: challenges herself to examine the pressures that led her to live a life that, to put it kindly, would seem countercultural to most of us. She presents her own and, by extension, women's sexuality less as being victimised by prostitution than as predatory and mercenary, as a career chosen and developed. She frankly describes the euphoria of drugs, of turning five or six tricks a night, and the added pleasure of reckoning the money that she earned. The Times
The elevated, poetic language of Aussie writer Holden's debut memoir vibrates with passion as she tells the story of the small victories and great obstacles she encountered as a heroin addict who turned to prostitution as a way of supporting her habit. The middle-class Holden, a carefree, artistic bohemian who scraped by selling books, is introduced to the drug in her early twenties by her boyfriend in the small Australian town of St. Kilda at a time when the grunge band Nirvana reigned and heroin was at the peak of its glamour. Holden finds the strength to recover through the help of her supportive family and, ironically, through her struggle with the very hardships she finally escapes. Her acutely vivid prose is a revelation, even if the subject matter is not. Recommended for all public libraries. [Holden's draft manuscript of this book won the Judy Duffy Award for literary excellence. Ed.] Elizabeth Brinkley, Granite Falls, WA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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