![]() 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. The denouement gathers together some strings of hope this is an achingly real, heartbreaking, and important read.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. In an afterword, author Benwell speaks directly to the privilege his white, British background affords and provides a list of LGBTQ support resources in the U.S., U.K., and South Africa. In short chapters punctuated by expressive sentence fragments that convey the inner workings of Neo’s thoughts, readers will experience these feelings along with her, and this emotional resonance creates an effect that becomes much more painful as the novel builds to a devastating crescendo. Though she’s had a best friend, Janet, for years, it is among Tale and her band mates that Neo finds actual acceptance and begins to gain a sense of herself. She is instantly smitten with Tale, the singer for one of the performing bands, and her believably self-conscious and fumbling pining gives way to a sweetly depicted experience of first love and sex that brims with warmth. Neo has always been drawn to music, so when the hosts of UmziRadio, a radio show she loves, are scheduled to appear at a bar nearby, she is compelled to go even though she knows she risks angering her disapproving and strict parents. A young black woman in Khayelitsha, South Africa, falls in love with another woman in this lyrical work of contemporary fiction.
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