“Each aberration of my skin is a song. Press your mouth against me. You will hear so much singing.” A review of Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl In Pieces
Before I jump straight into writing this essay, I just want to say two things, the first being that there’s a general spoiler warning for characters and content in this book. And secondly, that some of what I have to say may not pertain to you as a reader, and my thoughts and opinions are formed from my own experiences as they relate to the book, and you are free to form your own opinions from it for yourself.
Trigger Warning for talk of potentially triggering material; including the discussion of self harm (different methods) and suicide, depression, physical and sexual assault, rape, violence, and alcohol and drugs. If any of those issues listed could affect you please be careful if you choose to read this book.
This book is a deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, yet has taken so much, and her long journey back from the edge.
I got this book in late November, and I’m only just reading it now. Partly due to wanting to get through other books higher on my TBR list, but also partly because I wasn’t emotionally or mentally ready to jump into it because of the hard hitting content of it. And even reading it now, I had to take breaks when it got too heavy.
The main character Charlotte (Charlie) has had a difficult life, a life of being abused and assaulted, a life partly lived on the streets doing whatever she had to in order to survive. And the result of the events of her life so far, it landed her in a psychiatric ward for a suicide attempt. And this book is the story of the time she spent on the ward, of leaving and moving out of her state. And how things grow and change when she’s out.
If you’re someone who might relate to any of Charlie’s experiences, it could be a very worthwhile read, I know that for me, I can’t relate to all of it, but there are certainly some parts that have hit me extremely hard and left me breathless, where I had to put the book down and take a break. It can be really hard to read things that relate to hard parts in our own life, but I believe it can be beneficial. To remind yourself that you’re not alone in your experiences, that other people have lived through it too and survived it.
Even with the heavy content material, and how triggering it was to read at times, I enjoyed it.
The one question I have yet to answer is why. Why did I connect so much to it? What drew me to pick it up in the first place? What made it good? And what made me fight through the tough and triggering passages and continue to read it? And the reason for that is because I’ve had my own experiences with self harm. Personally for me, when it comes to books about mental health issues I have experience with, unlike some people, I will choose to pick them up, because for me it makes me feel less alone, and makes me feel seen in the struggles I’ve had.
I’m going to focus this review on a question I found at the back of the book: “Who are the different people in Charlie’s life who reach out to her with kindness, and how do they do that?”
In order to answer this, like the book itself, I’m going to split my answer into three parts, and discuss each person from the 3 sections of the book individually.
Starting with Part 1, the first person who shows Charlie kindness is Nurse Ava. She’s a very minor character who doesn’t get mentioned again, but it’s the first time in a long time that someone shows Charlie kindness, which in this case it’s in the form of finding her some clothes from the lost and found box as she came into the hospital wrapped in just a bed sheet. She also bought her some underwear, presumably out of her own money too.
The next person who shows her kindness is one of the nurses, Vinnie. He is the nurse who removes her bandages, and massages some cream into the skin and on the fresh scars. More than once he asks if she wants someone else in the room with her, and also stops when she shows signs of discomfort and makes sure he isn’t hurting her. There is another instance of Vinnie showing Charlie kindness too, after she's left hospital. She's supposed to be going home to stay with her mother until a bed opens up in a halfway house. Except her mother got her a bus ticket to Arizona to stay with Mikey. Vinnie is leaving the hospital in the transportation bus to collect some patients on day leave, and he takes her to the bus station. And he says to her to “I don’t ever wanna see you here again, Charlie-girl.”
One of the most important people who shows Charlie kindness in the first part of the novel is the therapist at the hospital, Bethany, most often referred to as Casper or GhostDoc. The way she treats Charlie with kindness is firstly by allowing her to take her healing slowly, not forcing her to speak until she was comfortable enough and ready to (due to her selective mutism as a result of her past trauma). The second instance of her showing kindness was emailing her and replying to Charlie’s email after she’d been discharged, and reminding her of the things she ought to avoid in order to prevent a relapse.
Louisa was Charlie’s roommate, or the patient Charlie had to share a room with while she was staying on the psychiatric ward. She didn’t push her to talk when she wasn’t yet ready, but talked to her about the mundane things, made her feel welcome and included in things. The first night Charlie was there Lousia sees her notice the scars on her body and tells her “Don’t be scared little one”, and Charlie just thinks ‘I wasn’t scared. I’d just never seen a girl with skin like mine.’ Louisa was the first patient on that ward when it opened, by her own explanation, and her nights were spent writing in composition notebooks which she stored under her bed. After Lousia dies, some of those notebooks are sent to Charlie as a way for her to understand what had happened and why, as well as learning more about Louisa’s story and why she ended up on the ward in the first place. In the second part of the book Charlie finds out through Blue that Louisa took her own life, and it leads both of them into a relapse, and to me that really gives an indication of how much Lousia meant to the people on that ward, and how kind she was as a person.
The final person who shows Charlotte kindness in the first part is an old friend called Mikey (or Michael). He is someone who tracks throughout the book, however, the things that really stand out happen within the first part. Firstly, Mikey managed to call her while she was on the ward, and asked his mother to drop off some of his sister’s old clothes so she had something to wear. And the second big thing that he does that shows kindness towards Charlie is actually turn up outside the hospital ward. He holds up signs saying “Don’t you die.” He travelled all the way from Arizona to see her, and make sure she was okay, and I feel like that really shows a deep level of kindness and care. He also later tells her to “keep your shit together and stay strong”.
There are two people to discuss in the second part of Girl in Pieces, the first being Mikey’s landlady, Ariel. There are several ways in which she shows Charlie kindness. The initial kind thing Ariel did for Charlie is allow her to stay in the guesthouse Mikey uses, and the next positive situation that occurs is she’s given two weeks to find a job and move out. This might sound unkind and the opposite of what I’ve just said, however, the reason behind what Ariel did was out of kindness, so she could move forward with both her life and her recovery journey. She also gave Charlie a recommendation of somewhere to inquire about a job, which indirectly landed her the job in True Grit.
One of the things that really stood out to me as an act of kindness from her is when she invited Charlie to one of her art workshops when she noticed her interest in some of the works in her house. This then led to Charlie sharing some of her own work in a gallery later on. The final thing that Ariel does which shows Charlie kindness is open up to her and talk to her about the art she saw in the house, and the background to that. She also spoke to her about her son and opened up to her, and gave her some advice to help.
The other person who plays a large role in Charlie’s life in a positive way is Leonard. He was the landlord for the place that Charlie found after she started her job. When she got there he explained a bit about the previous occupant of the room, and knocked down the rate of her rent because of the state the room was left in, and the fact she doesn’t have a bed, as well as a few other factors. One of the first things he says to her is “bring the troubles you already got and no more than that”, which I personally feel is a kind gesture, as many of the people already living in that house are addicts or people who have problems of one description or another, but he gives them all a chance, provided they help themselves and don’t give him more trouble. Leonard also helped her out a few times, with giving her spare light bulbs and a nail to hang her stolen cross on. He also later gets dressed up to go to her art gallery show. However, for me the biggest act of kindness that Leonard shows towards Charlie is that he does his best to keep her alive in whatever way he knows how to when she attempts to take her own life. The whole time Charlie knows Leonard, he does everything to be a kind presence in her life and make things as simple as he can, whether he knows that’s what he’s doing or not.
There are multiple people who help Charlie and show her a great deal of kindness in the final part of this book. So I’m going to start by talking about two of her work colleagues Linus and Tanner.
Throughout the second and third parts of Girl in Pieces, Linus and Tanner have been inclusive and kind to Charlie. They included her in conversations in the kitchen at True Grit. They didn’t judge her or make comments about her scars when she wore short sleeves to work, and Linus helped her a lot when she first started there, explaining the tasks she needed to do, and being patient if she worked slower at first. Similarly to Leonard, there is one act of kindness towards Charlie that really stands out from the rest. They make sure she’s safe after she attempts to take her life, and bandage her wounds, as Tanner is learning and training to be an EMT and understands what he’s doing. They both make sure she’s comfortable and keep her company, both in a physical sense and by talking to her. They both give her the space and time to open up to them, and Linus also opens up to her about her own struggles with alcohol and the familial difficulties that created as a result. Linus also takes Charlie to a clothing store to buy new clothes since all of hers got ripped up and destroyed.
Following on from that, someone else who shows Charlie a great deal of kindness after her attempted suicide is Felix, the grandfather to Linus and Tanner. He allows them all to stay in his home for a few days while Charlie recovers and processes all the things that have happened to lead to that point. At this point, he also tells Charlie that “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.”
He is also an artist, and he can see that in her, as well as having seen a few of her drawings. And he tells her she needs to “give your skill an emotion.” He also lent her some old clothes as she had nothing when she arrived at his house. He also gave her a place to sleep, and a room and supplies to use to create her art after she read Louisa’s journals and read her story. He told her to put emotions into her work, and she did that by drawing comic strip panels of the story of her life and Louisa’s as well. Before they all leave to go back to Arizona, he tells Charlie, “You be you, Charlotte. You be you.” He also offers her the job of being his personal assistant if she is happy to take it, and essentially gives her another fresh start away from all the traumatic things that have happened to her.
And the final person I’d like to discuss who reached out to Charlie with kindness is the character of Blue. Her character definitely changed through the novel, and she explained it best; “That person I was at Creeley, that wasn’t really me. Sometimes with people, you just become something, like, your role happens to you, instead of you choosing it.” By the end, she was a genuine caring person, and someone who was dealing with a lot of issues. She shows kindness towards Charlotte in a few different ways through the book, though not everyone will view them as being kind. The first thing that stood out to me was that she was the trigger to get Charlie to start talking again. Blue calling her ‘Silent Sue’ all the time, and then picking on her during the group therapy session, trying to trigger some sort of reaction, which it does eventually.
The second thing that Blue did to show kindness to Charlie was to say this: “The moral of the story, Charlie, is this: Don’t let the cereal eat you. It’s only a fucking box of cereal, but it will eat you alive if you let it.” There are probably a few ways to interpret what she actually said, but the way I see it is this: your addiction is just that, an addiction. And there are two ways of dealing with it, you can either see it for what it is, an illness, and you can fight it and deal with it in a healthy way. Or you can let it eat you alive, you can keep up with the unhealthy coping mechanisms you’ve learnt, and it will get the best of you and you’ll die because of it. Those are your choices. I see it as Blue trying to be supportive and helpful to Charlie, trying to give her the best chance at recovery as she leaves the safe environment of the hospital and has to face the world of triggers waiting for her on the other side of the doors.
The next instance of Blue showing Charlie kindness is when she checks her emails at the library and sees one from Blue. She’s checking up on Charlie, seeing if she’s okay, asking how things are with her mother, and letting her know about events happening on the ward, how everyone is doing. As well as lightly teasing her about some of her past trauma and the things she’s been through. There are a couple of emails sent between them before she turns up in Arizona to stay with Charlie, which she does warn her is happening. Something else that gets referenced is the fact that Blue’s father has a lot of money, and because he felt bad about things that happened, he sends her money. This means that she has a readily available source of money, and therefore can help Charlie out with food and bills.
The final, and biggest way that Blue showed kindness towards Charlie, as with Linus, Tanner and Leonard, is her response to Charlie’s relapse and attempt on her life. She encourages Charlotte to throw away her ‘tender kit’, and talk about her feelings and her trauma if she feels safe to, and at the end, Blue puts forward the idea of going to a support group, and to find a therapist to help them both with their recovery journeys.
I don’t pretend to know the experience of everyone with mental health issues, nor do I for a second believe that the experience I had is the same as the one Charlie had in the book, and I’m fully aware that everyone experiences their mental health issues differently and copes in various different ways. That being said, I know the feeling that Charlie describes, the feeling of loneliness even when surrounded by people. The feeling that no one can really understand what I’m feeling, and what used to drive the need to hurt just to feel something. Something that makes those feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and loneliness easier to cope with, and with time maybe even eliminate them, is by having people show some compassion and kindness, which is evident in Charlie’s story towards the end, when she comes back to her apartment and sees Blue, and they just hug each other and give each other the space to feel their emotions about everything that’s happened to them up until then. And allow each other the freedom to talk about and discuss anything they want to share.
This book meant a lot to me, and reading through the author’s note, it made me feel sad to know that the author has had experience with some of the content that was written about, which in a way makes me connect with it even more.
This isn’t the first book I’ve read about teenagers and young people who have self harmed, or attempted suicide and every single one has had an impact on me. But none more so than this one. Girl in Pieces had an incredibly strong impact on me, so much so that only a mere 15 pages in, I had to put it down and take a couple of days away from reading it. And I think that part of why that happened was because of a number of factors; the first being the graphic depiction of the state the main character Charlie was in. The second being the severity of her actions. And the third thing being the memories it brought up of my own history with self harm.
Being able to read something with a character who felt like a mirror for some things I’ve been through was freeing in a way I’ve never felt before. Because unlike other books I’ve read about mental health topics, and self harm and suicide specifically, Charlie found her people, she found people who could be there for her when she fell or when she had a relapse in her recovery, and that was something that particularly resonated with me. And the reason for that is because for a long time I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have anyone I knew I could rely on or be open and vulnerable with without the fear of judgement.
But now however, I think I have finally found my people, I’ve found people who genuinely do care about me, who worry about me when I’m having a difficult time. I’ve found people who I can be completely honest with them and know that even if they don’t know the right words, or the best things to say, they’ll still listen and give me the space to share if I need to, and I’d do the same for them. For anyone who related to this book as much as I did, I hope there are people around you who are supportive in your life, and if there aren’t right now, hold onto the hope that someone will.