The Perfect Cut by Julie Burtinshaw
When Bryan’s older sister Michelle dies, Bryan should be filled with grief. Or anger. Or something. But instead, all he feels is numb. Nothing matters anymore: not his arguing parents, not his supportive (ex)girlfriend and certainly not school.
In face, the only thing that matters is the relief he finds when he cuts himself. But even that relief is only temporary, and lately, it’s just not enough. Besides, if someone as tough as Michelle couldn’t make it, what hope is there for him?
To survive, Bryan must remember how to feel again, and do that he needs to trust that no matter what he’s done, the people in his life haven’t give up on him.
I really enjoyed this book. A little softer than the Ellen Hopkins stuff, but still very inspiring. After Bryan’s sister dies his family falls apart at the edges. He has no one to turn to and starts to fade from life. Written in a variety of short, one page chapters to five or six pages, there are lots of spaces, breaks and white space.
Each character has a specific part to play and they are all entwined perfectly together.
The novel is very real and has many pop cultural references that aren’t in jest of teenagers and having Michelle play guitar that she passed onto Bryan opened up the world of music in the book that readers who enjoy Music for the meanings and have it inspire their life will really identify with.
Except from the book:
Now:
Bryan surfaced in a fog, as if he’d been pulled abruptly from a deep sleep, wondering how he’d ended up standing in the upstairs hallway, metres away from Michelle’s bedroom door. He attempted to blink away the grogginess, but his thoughts were unclean, even after several minutes. Not only were the flashbacks, so infrequent in the beginning, becoming more common, the time gaps were increasing, as if the line between the past and the present were dissolving. Would that line one day dissolve completely? He closed his eyes and mentally listed what he knew about the past twelve hours: He’d been at the school all day – hadn’t skipped a class. He’d taken his time getting home, stopping at the second hand bookstore where he’d picked up a Sodoku magazine and a tattered copy of The Doors. He remembered thumbing through the pages, until he came to a picture of Jim Morrison pounding out a song, oblivious to anything else. Michelle loved The Doors. She’d taught him to play “the End”, and they often played it together. At the time, he hadn’t been away of the irony in the lyrics. And now, he found himself standing outside her room, half convinced that is he could see through the solid wood of her door, she’d be in there, head bent over her Stratocaster Rosa Hurricane, her long hair obscuring her profile, and she’d look up at him, and say, “come on in, Bry. Need some help with math?”
He took a deep breath ad moved four paces to her door. Close. Locked, probably, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn the handle.
The Michelle Shrine. Out of bounds for over a year now.
He slowly backed away from her door, the thick Persian carpet muffling the sound of his footsteps. Four steps to the middle of the hall, six to the bathroom and four more to the sink. How many minutes had he been standing there? Five? Fifteen? No way of know… he listened to the sounds of the house, but heard only his short rapid breathing. The silence told him the parents were not home, yet.
He knew one sure way to get back to the present…
Other books to read:
Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
Willow by Julia Hoban
Cut by Patricia McCormick
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