Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way 'girls who write their pain on their bodies' scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a 'semifamous' local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic.

But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her-who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves-Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she 'like-likes' but who had pined for Ellis instead. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. YA)Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Unlike James Lecesne’s Absolute Brightness (2008), this sometimes melodramatic story is redeemed by creative back stories and touching relationships.

Though offering nothing new or insightful, Jeff’s voice shows true development during his hospitalization. Sadie’s morbid adaptation of “And then there were none” will appeal to those with dark humor and prevents the narrative tone from lecturing. Astute readers will identify Jeff’s secret long before his first-person, present-tense narration reveals it, but the skillfully written secondary characters, especially fellow patient Sadie, hold this work above typical gay-teen-suicide dramas. More Kaysan ( Girl, Interrupted, 1993) than Kesey, Ford’s introspective tale follows a fairly typical coming-out process, though with additional angst. As other teens come and go from the ward, Jeff finds himself connecting with them in unexpected ways while confronting his own unresolved turmoil. Awakening in a psychiatric ward with gauze on his stitched-up wrists, 15-year-old Jeff tries to convince both his doctors and his parents that the cuts were just a bored teenage mistake.

Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford