Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow
Summary: Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.
Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.
A deeply moving portrait of a teenage girl on the verge of losing herself and the journey she must take to survive in her own skin, Kathleen Glasgow’s debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It’s a story you won’t be able to look away from.
Raw, heartfelt, and at times difficult to read, this story draws readers into Charlie’s world of pain, desperation, and finally, hope. The first section unfolds in a series of snippets, short bursts of sensation that reflect both Charlie’s overwhelmed state as she adjusts to life at a treatment center and her refusal to speak to anyone. It’s a brilliant opening, because the reader comes to care deeply about Charlie, and when the extent of the horrors she has been through come out, you can’t look away. When she is released from the treatment center and abandoned by her mother and has to scrape by on her earnings from a part-time dishwashing job, she has to fight to keep from the self-harming behaviors that give her temporary solace. It’s easy to see why, with every day a struggle not to set a sharp object against her skin, she makes dubious choices and is so desperate to be loved that she falls in with a guy who is even less together than she is. In the end, though, Charlie’s story is one of perseverance and learning to accept help.
GIRL IN PIECES is out now.
Kathy MacMillan 