Cut - Hardcover

McCormick, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886910618 ISBN 13: 9781886910614

Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press, 2000

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Callie isn't speaking to anybody, not even her therapist at Sea Pines, the "residential treatment facility" where her parents and doctor sent her after discovering that she cuts herself. As her story unfolds, Callie reluctantly becomes involved with the "guests" at Sea Pines--other young women struggling with problems of their own, Although their "issues" are different from hers, Callie is drawn into the group, finds her voice, and, gradually, confronts the family trauma that triggered her destructive behavior. Cut is a compelling and compassionate look at a young woman's struggle to overcome the impulses that led her to inflict harm on herself.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia McCormick has worked as a free-lance magazine and newspaper writer, contributing regularly to The New York Times and Parents magazine, where she reviewed children's books and family movies. Since completing a master's degree in creative writing at the New School, she's concentrated almost exclusively on writing fiction. In 2004 she was named a New York Foundation on the Arts fellow. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Cut is her first novel.

Reviews

Grade 8 Up-Callie's first-person account of her stay at Sea Pines, a mental-health facility, is poignant and compelling reading. Through flashbacks and anecdotal accounts, the teen describes group therapy, her anger and fear, and, after digging deeply, the circumstances that contributed to her need to cut herself. Callie closets herself with silence and cover-up clothing. Her astute observations resonate with reality: the lack of privacy; "guest" control; the constant smell of vomit; and the other teen residents' anger, sadness, and fear. Personalities and addictions are woven subtly into the story: anorexic Becca and Tara; Debbie, eating everything, unable to control her smothering maternal instinct; Tiffany and Sydney, addicted to tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, railing at incarceration, but afraid to go back to the streets. Then Callie's Group has a new guest: Amanda, scarred from self-abusive cutting. Exposure of her own behavior is Callie's first step in breaking free of her mental bonds, but first she has to face her fear and guilt, real or imagined. McCormick's first novel is powerfully written. Not for the squeamish, the young women's stories avoid pathos and stereotypes. Shelley Stoehr's Crosses (Bantam, 1991) and Steven Levenkron's Luckiest Girl in the World (Viking, 1998) dealt with cutting, but Cut takes the issue one step further-to helping teens find solutions to problems.
Gail Richmond, San Diego Unified Schools, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This first novel combines pathos with insight as it describes adolescent girls being hospitalized for a variety of psychiatric disorders: "The place is called a residential treatment facility. It is not called a loony bin," states Callie, the narrator, with characteristic grit. Callie does not speak aloud for most of the story, but directs her silent commentary chiefly to her therapist. Through this internalized dialogue, readers become aware of Callie's practice of cutting herself and, more gradually, how her cutting is a response to the dynamics of her damaged family. Similarly, the other girls' problemsDanorexia, overeating, substance abuseDcome to seem (both to themselves and to readers) like attempts to fight off parental or societal obliviousness to their needs: "It's like we're invisible," says a girl during a climactic scene. While running the risk of simplifying the healing process, this novel, like Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, sympathetically and authentically renders the difficulties of giving voice to a very real sense of harm and powerlessness. Refusing to sensationalize her subject matter, McCormick steers past the confines of the problem-novel genre with her persuasive view of the teenage experience. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 7-10. Callie ("ST" for Silent Treatment) is part of Group, teenage girls (make that "guests") hospitalized at Sea Pines (or "Sick Minds") for a variety of psychological "issues"--food, drugs, behavior problems, etc. Callie has begun to cut herself, a fact she reveals only to the reader, for she has stopped talking. Self-mutilation has become her cry for help from a terrifyingly delicate, asthmatic brother; a nonfunctioning mother; and an escaping father. She is so depressed and overwhelmed by her burden of caretaking that she requires the rush of pain and the high of watching her own blood seep to the surface. Like E. L. Konigsburg's Silent to the Bone [BKL Ag 00] and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (1999), Cut is another authentic-sounding novel in which elective mutism plays a part, this time with humor making the pain of adolescence gone awry more bearable. A too-tidy ending notwithstanding, this is an exceptional character study of a young woman and her hospital mates who struggle with demons so severe that only their bodies can confess. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1886910618
• ISBN 13: 9781886910614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176