A review of Cut by Patricia McCormick
Cut by Patricia McCormick is a story of a young teenage girl who is battling her own inner demons. The book is written in first person and is told from the viewpoint of the main character, Callie. Callie is the average 15 year old high school student... except she is dealing with mental illness. The novel begins with Callie sitting in a chair in a psychologist's office. She is being asked by the psychologist how it all started. Callie then remembers how it started. She tells the reader, but not the psychologist, of how she was running in a cross-country meet and lost sight of the other runners. Callie then ran from the meet to her home across town. She tells the reader of how when she got home no one was there and how she picked up an Exacto knife and used it to cut her skin. She then says that the cut made her have an out-of-body experience and left her feeling satisfied and 'awesome.' Callie is in a residential treatment facility for teenage girls called Sea Pines (The patients however, call it Sick Minds). She is there because of her problem with self-mutilation. There are other girls there who are all very interesting characters. Tara and Becca are girls with eating disorders. Debbie also has an eating disorder, but she overeats. Sydney and Tiffany are both drug addicts. Callie is, at the beginning of the novel, the only girl at Sea Pines for a "behavioral disorder." Callie refuses to speak to anyone during her time in Sea Pines. She will not speak at group, meals, free time, during family visits and calls, or the time she spends with her psychologist. She keeps all of her feelings locked inside as she recounts them to the reader. As the novel progresses and a new character who self-mutilates for decoration is introduced into Sea Pines, Callie begins to realize that by not speaking she is never going to get better and that she really does need to get better. She slowly starts to speak and talk about her feelings. She tells her psychologist how she feels as though she caused her little brother's asthma. She blames herself for everything that is wrong in her family and that is why she cuts. She talks about the other girls and how what their problems are make her feel. Callie slowly begins to get better and understand that it is not her fault that these things happened. Near the end of the novel she runs away from Sea Pines. She gets pretty far away and calls her dad to come get her at a Dunkin Donuts. He meets her there and they talk for a little bit. She ends up telling him that she thinks she is getting better and that she needs him to bring her back to Sea Pines so that she can get completely better. Her father agrees, buys donuts for all the other girls at Sea Pines, and the novel ends with her staying at Sea Pines to continue treatment. This novel is a very quick read and I would recommend it to anyone over the age of 12. It does a very good job at painting a vivid picture of mental illness and the struggle of the recovery of one girl with self-mutilation.