Bottle-stopper spectacles. Traffic-stopping breasts. And a car heater up on sauna-hot. The quaintly monikered Isserley passes days in a blur of Scot's weather and white lines. She likes to pick up hitch-hikers. Men. Not old, no fat for her. Tall, defined. Younger. Buckle-up for safety. And caution at all times; once or twice the police have looked into those riding with Isserley. Tattoos are okay, though. After all, tattoos are only skin deep.

Michel Faber's debut novel (there was a diverting short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, previously) is an awkward beast. For one, I can tell you little more than the above without giving Faber's game away. But by the same token, he does that himself only a few pages in. It's as though his book has ended 200 pages too soon.

Instead, Under The Skin looks to test the limits of minimalism. There are no real characters outside of Isserley, and we don't, in all honesty, get to know that much about her. Each pick-up is a tight mini-drama in and of itself. Two narrative voices in a confined space. Waiting, deciding: what does he expect of her; vice versa. That's where Faber derives his tension. Threat. Ambiguity. Elsewhere, things are too outré for that.

As a result, Under The Skin, for all it intrigues, feels a little stretched. You want more of the poetry of Ardliss Vess' visit - "pure water floating through the air like smoke" - than just the Rosshire A9 skidding past beneath your wheels. After all, as Isserley herself concludes, "nothing that happened on the ground could ever compete with the grandeur of what happened above."