Book review: Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

Delacorte Press, 2016

Girl in Pieces talks is a masterfully created emotional rollercoaster about self-harm, sexual assault, eating disorders, depression, suicide, alcohol and drug addiction so there is a trigger warning for anyone seeking to read this book. This novel doesn’t romanticize or glorify self-harm and mental health and reveals dark depictions of homelessness and abuse. Kathleen Glasgow masterfully shows the inner turmoil of someone battling mental health issues. The book has its readers walk along with the protagonist, Charlie Davis on her journey from waking up in a Minnesota psychiatric hospital to a sudden discharge back to the same life that drove her there. She should be dead by now.

As the title suggests, Charlie attempts to pick up the pieces of herself and make herself whole again throughout the book. Every time Charlie would go two steps forward, she’d fall two steps back and may not off the happy ending we always hope for in a read that tackles the less spoken issues in society such as suicide down to less triggering topics as our health care insurance system whose lack of healthcare puts Charlie back out from where she came.

As Charlie grapples with toxic relationships, an unfixed past, and an unsteady future, she must make a decision to fix herself or stay shattered. Girl in Pieces is raw, blunt, and acknowledged a lot of the struggles that are normally not written about like the recovery aspect of mental illness and the ups and downs of healing.