The Doll in Human Skin

THE DOLL IN HUMAN SKINBy Solenne Ricci "There was a summer of my life where I allowed myself to be consumed, and to consume." In a city where time stutters and buildings seem to hold their breath, a young woman steps across the threshold of another's world-and vanishes, not from the streets, but from herself. Drawn into the eerie glow of a pianist's apartment-a white hall lined with echoes-she becomes muse, shadow, marionette. Her name is forgotten. Her body is dressed not in fabric, but in suggestion. In someone else's skin. Virelle-a woman of myth, music, and menace-draws the girl ever inward with hands like incantations and a voice like lullaby and blade. Desire tangles with dread. Obsession disguises itself as intimacy. And slowly, the girl begins to fracture-first subtly, then utterly. Part modern gothic, part psychological fever-dream, The Doll in Human Skin is a lyrical, unflinching descent into the theatre of power, identity, and the masks we wear to survive. Through hypnotic prose and dreamlike disorientation, Solenne Ricci explores how grooming, obsession, and longing can masquerade as art-and how art, in turn, can become a prison. When you are both the doll and the sculptor, how do you tell who is moving whom?