Synopsis: This is the story of Emily Bowyer who, during her GCSE year, begins to cut herself. The reader learns quickly that Emily is a kind, sensitive, and responsible person who is generous to her family and friends. There seems little reason for her to be unhappy. She has a good home, loving parents, a sweet younger brother and a best friend. She is academically able and enjoys learning. Why is it then that she develops a need for the ritual and release of self-harming?

The ‘ordinary’ setting of her home and school life adds power to the deterioration of Emily’s state as we track her through her GCSE year and become aware of the tensions and pressures she endures. Emily has an innate tendency to conform, be good and achieve in her studies. These characteristics are normal, but combined with other factors help to determine her decision to experiment and then continue to cut.

Review: Joanna Kenrick presents a number of factors and reasons contributing to why young people may self-harm. She suggests that although Emily has many positive qualities she is prey to self-doubt, in particular about herself in relation to her friends and anxious about being misunderstood. She feels her family are more concerned about her brother who is having trouble settling into his new secondary school while she is expected to continue ‘being good and doing well’. She begins to believe she is not as ‘good’ or as ‘nice’ as people think and doubts her motives even when feeling rightly critical about her friend’s selfish behaviour.

As her relationship with her friend Lizzie deteriorates Emily’s high standards become more exacting until she becomes overly critical and unable to make mistakes. She begins to feel responsible for the feelings and emotional welfare of her family while at the same time rejecting the attentions from her mother. She interprets her mother’s fussing as unbearable pressure to do well in her school work – a requirement that is being constantly echoed by her teachers.

Emily’s feelings of ‘badness’ lead to an unbearable tension and coupled with the need to punish herself she scratches her arm. The pain she feels releases tension and makes her feel calmer. Scratching soon progresses from administering small shallow cuts to deeper cutting that occurs more and more frequently until, as the year progresses, she is cutting nearly everyday. The ritual and pain of cutting offers release but also makes her afraid – of being discovered, yes, but also, of what she is doing will one day not give her the satisfaction she needs.

Kenrick’s skill is to present the many aspects of self-harming behaviour without losing the momentum and structure of a story that is driven by simple dialogue that is sometimes very funny and utterly believable. Although characters are described with economy, they are recognisable and real, and it is through their conversations and Emily’s thoughts that events and situations come alive.

There are external pressures that contribute to Emily’s destructive behaviour. Kenrick is never polemical but introduces these outside pressures skilfully to show their powerful influence. She emphasises how teachers pile pressure and expectations onto young people during the GCSE year, seemingly without thinking of the effect, eager for their pupils to achieve in order to put themselves and the school in a good light. Continuous reminders of tests and exams are given, culminating with the climactic threat of mocks and then the real thing. The girls joke that every teacher will mention GCSEs on the first day of term, but the joke soon palls as they are proved right. This constant reminding, jocular or serious and coming from all sides and everyone, can be interpreted as a form of insidious bullying. Constant high levels of homework, no time for reflection or anything energetic that is not academic, builds up a picture of a life of heavy stress. Teachers appear too busy and uninterested to notice and identify distress in their pupils; indeed a general lack of sympathy or care appears the norm.

Emily sinks further into despair, losing friends, self-esteem, and academic prowess and most painful of all, once her family discovers her secret, her father’s regard. He cannot understand her behaviour and is repulsed. This is the hardest blow for Emily who always felt that they shared a special bond and his rejection makes her feel particularly alone. For the reader, Emily’s reasons are horribly clear, her misery is lucidly logical – as we have shared her journey we know why she cuts and respect her for it, as her father cannot.

Kenrick manages to pack an amazingly wide range of aspects related to self-harming in a readable, punchy story. This book offers support and understanding for young people who have self-harmed and awareness for those who haven’t. Emily does receive help through counselling – this part of the story is handled with sensitivity but also hard realism – no easy or magic answers here. She does get better, but only through her own slow efforts to self-awareness and self-forgiveness and does not get ‘cured’. Emily realises that self-harming is an option that exists in her life and that although she might not want to do it now she can it access at any time. This is a difficult notion for a young person to manage and accept.

This is a truthful, moving and readable book that offers important information to young people. For parents, teachers and all adults who are concerned with the issue of self- harming it not only raises awareness but also shocks into considering how society needs to promote an environment designed to support and nurture the health, happiness and well-being of its young.

2007-03-19