Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving.
Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her-who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves-Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street.
Outstanding for its target audience, and even those outside Doctorow’s traditional reach may find themselves moved by its call to action.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Such nerd-favorite icons as 3-D printers, Wil Wheaton and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic serve as in-jokes, but the concise explanations of real-world technology and fast pace make it accessible to less technologically savvy readers. After all, the secrets contained reveal large-scale privacy breaches and government corruption that involves military contractors like the intimidating figures following Marcus around. He’s tasked with sorting through the massive potential leak, making sense of the secrets revealed, and coming up with a method of release that is credible, will attract notice and won’t be linked back to him. Frenemy Masha has given him some confidential information as insurance to release should anything happen to her-which it does. Even as Marcus works to effect change through legitimate channels, he grapples with an ethical quandary. Through a lucky encounter and thanks to his reputation as a technological guru and activist-a reputation left over from Little Brother (2008)-Marcus lands a job as webmaster for an independent politician campaigning as a reformer. Marcus Yallow is at a loss he’s dropped out of college because of finances and struggles to find employment in a terrible recession. Doctorow strikes a successful balance between agenda and story in his newest near-future, pre-dystopian thriller.
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