A harrowing portrait of depression and the toxic legacy of abuse.
When a teenager falls into a spiral of depression and self-harm, friends and family try to save her before it’s too late.
In this debut novel, a solitary teenage girl, dressed all in black, makes her way through the city to her friend’s apartment on a summer day. Amy is sensitive, quiet, and shy, with few close pals except for Bethany, an outgoing girl who is concerned that her friend seems depressed. Amy was close to another classmate named Jason, until he dropped out of school after his girlfriend became pregnant. As their friendship deepens, Beth discovers that Amy’s depression includes damaging actions. At times of intense personal stress, Amy cuts her arms and legs. Despite her attempts to connect with Jason and Beth’s efforts to help her, Amy slides further into a cycle of depression and cutting. Amy’s parents are bitterly divided over how best to help her; her mother encourages therapy, but her father believes her problems are a cry for attention. When tragedy strikes, Amy finds herself in an emotional free fall that culminates in hospitalization after cutting her arm. A new friendship offers her another opportunity for connection, but it may not be enough to save her from her depression. Meanwhile, a young couple fall in love after meeting at a party. Their marriage soon plunges into a cycle of addiction and abuse—a pattern whose effects last for generations. North’s book delivers a riveting and dynamic examination of depression and self-mutilation in a teenage girl and the lasting effects of abuse within a family. But the multilayered narrative approach is not perfectly seamless. Amy is a strong and sympathetic protagonist whose struggle with depression and cutting affects every aspect of her life, from relationships with family and friends to performance at work and school. Although her depression is primarily viewed through the lens of the people who know her best, her diary entries provide valuable insights. In one passage describing her love of black clothing and goth culture, she asserts: “I don’t know how to explain it other than there’s a comfort in misery, something dark and familiar and soothing, like feeling protected by shadow. No one can find me, no one can hurt me, no one can even see me.” The author utilizes a singular structure in telling Amy’s story. Most of the narrative is in the third person; however, chapters narrated by Beth, Beth’s father, a nurse, and two of Amy’s classmates supply additional perspectives on their efforts to help Amy. North’s novel also includes a parallel tale about a young couple whose marriage gradually disintegrates under the weight of addiction and abuse. The pacing of the couple’s story is intense as innocent domestic arguments gradually escalate into a shocking breach of trust, but the transitions between their tale and Amy’s are abrupt, and the characters are never referred to by name. While the couple are pivotal to the narrative, Amy’s story offers stronger overall character development.
A harrowing portrait of depression and the toxic legacy of abuse.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5467-0594-9
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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