Girl in Pieces - Kathleen Glasgow

Review by Coll
4 Stars

So our first review after a very long hiatus and I decide to do an incredibly difficult book to write about, so this should be fun. Honestly, I chose Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow on a whim. I had not been in the best of moods and the title just called out to me when I saw it, so I chose it. I knew nothing about the plot, and therefore nothing about the emotional, and personal, whiplash I was in for.

There is no sugar-coating what this book is about; it tells the story of Charlotte “Charlie” Davis, a teenage girl who cuts herself. The book starts off rather abruptly with her in a home for girls, where she has been placed after being found on the streets, homeless, near destroyed and mutilated by her own hands. In the opening pages I found myself a little clueless as to what was happening but all the pieces fall into place rather quickly. Not to mention the main character also seems a little lost at first so I felt it put me on a more intimate level with her. We quickly learn of the troubled life Charlie has led and follow her through her time at the home and her time after release, with many flashbacks to her old life.

Now there is nothing easy about taking in a story about someone who self-harms. If you have harmed yourself in the past it stirs up so many mixed emotions in you, and if you are someone who had never self-harmed it just seems hard to stomach, I would assume. To be completely candid, I used to self-harm. There is no shame in admitting it but there is also no glorifying it, and I felt this book showed the reality of what it is like quite well. I have read other reviews on it where it is said to be too extreme or that there are too many issues going on at once and I have to beg to differ with that. I felt the story could have been very real and I am sure it is for some girls. I also think it gives a good glimpse into the mind of a girl who thinks she needs to go to such extremes just to handle existing.

Girl in Pieces reads similarly to a series of diary entries with flashbacks strewn throughout. The chapters are short, for the most part, and it is a writing style that does take a little getting used to, but I noticed that after a few chapters it flowed without a problem for me. The only thing I took occasional issue with was that the writing could be a little too poetic at times. For example: “My eyes are fierce with water…” This happens from time to time and it can be a little overly done at points but I feel like those moments did not take away from the reading experience. Also what teenager didn’t think in such dramatic and poetic ways at times? It kind of comes with being a teenager, especially an artistic one like Charlie.

Numerous characters are thrown into this book, both weak and strong, and they are all rather compelling in terms of their issues and the impact they have on themselves and one another. They show how troubled people will feed off one another for help and comfort but too often in the wrong way, where they enable and destroy each other. I think Glasgow also did a great job of showing how some of the bonds we form with people over our flaws become the strongest and most needed friendships. She shows that instead of flaws being a negative, some positive can come out of them, although not without pain.

Girl in Pieces, to me, is a book that should be read. And I don’t just mean read by people who can relate to it but also by those who can’t relate and could never understand the idea of harming oneself. It provides and eye-opening clarity and a painful truth of what really goes on in some people’s lives. I am not going to lie, it is not an easy book to get through and it is not a light read. I even found myself having to walk away from it several times. I don’t mean that in a bad way either. It was just so real and vivid at times that I needed to take a step back to absorb everything before going back. In the end I really loved the book. It never once got slow or boring and the main character was someone I really felt for and I found myself incredibly concerned with her story and the outcome of it all. Girl in Pieces in a break from the YA books we automatically think of and provides a dose of pain, reality, and redemption that is so sorely needed sometimes.

“Everyone has that moment, I think, the moment when something so…momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there.”

Interested in Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow? Check it out on Goodreads.