Rating: 
Summary: Thankfully, a memoir of a SIer
Review: I am thankful to see a memoir of someone who SIs. This is an important contribution to the literature about self-injury. At the same time, I felt much distance from the author while I was reading. I wonder if there is something of a generational gap between the author and myself in our experiences with SI, as I truly couldn't relate to some of her accounts, thoughts, and feelings about SI. I found SI to be a much more intense, gripping problem that truly had me in its grasps for many years. It was not something that I could stop at any time, as she felt.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent read.
Review: I came across this book by accident and found it to be a true delight. The author writes beautifully about a difficult subject without overdramatizing or giving in to self-pity. I highly recommend this book to other readers.
Rating:
Summary: Skin Game review
Review: I came across this book randomly in a second hand store but it struck me and I took it home and read it in it's entirety that night. While some reviewers have felt that Caroline Kettlewell was gloryifying her cutting I disagree. The way she wrote about it expressed how she felt at the time she cut. It was a wonderful way to overcome her other problems, to her, while she knew it was wrong, it was still a blessing. I have been struggling with depression for most of my life and I still have to fight to keep from cutting. In reading this book I felt so much less alone than ever before.Something I feel is important about this book is that it is a first hand account. Caroline Kettlewell gives information on cutting that is scientifically based but it is only to give insight to her experience. So much of society had misconceptions about people struggling with depression, cutting, and eating disorders among other mental diseases and illness' that I find it very important for people to read about a real live person. Give a person to go with the disease. So many sufferers are defined by their problems and "outsiders" can't see past that. Caroline Kettlewell also happens to have a degree in English which makes this book an extremely pleasant read. It is well written and while it does include the science behind the psychology it is in understandable terms; you don't feel like you're reading a text book. The personal account of a disease starting in preadolescence until adulthood and how it was overcome gives hope to sufferers and a new point of view to their friends and families. A MUST read.
Rating:
Summary: An important book as well as a great read!
Review: I came across this book randomly in a second hand store but it struck me and I took it home and read it in it's entirety that night. While some reviewers have felt that Caroline Kettlewell was gloryifying her cutting I disagree. The way she wrote about it expressed how she felt at the time she cut. It was a wonderful way to overcome her other problems, to her, while she knew it was wrong, it was still a blessing. I have been struggling with depression for most of my life and I still have to fight to keep from cutting. In reading this book I felt so much less alone than ever before. Something I feel is important about this book is that it is a first hand account. Caroline Kettlewell gives information on cutting that is scientifically based but it is only to give insight to her experience. So much of society had misconceptions about people struggling with depression, cutting, and eating disorders among other mental diseases and illness' that I find it very important for people to read about a real live person. Give a person to go with the disease. So many sufferers are defined by their problems and "outsiders" can't see past that. Caroline Kettlewell also happens to have a degree in English which makes this book an extremely pleasant read. It is well written and while it does include the science behind the psychology it is in understandable terms; you don't feel like you're reading a text book. The personal account of a disease starting in preadolescence until adulthood and how it was overcome gives hope to sufferers and a new point of view to their friends and families. A MUST read.
Rating:
Summary: My Life Story in a Nutshell
Review: I could completely relate to this book. I have been a cutter for 2 years now. I felt every emotion that the author poured into this book. It helped me to realize that I am not alone, and that maybe there is a way out of this dark hole. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs help with self-mutilation, or to anyone who likes to read stories about real-life issues.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting, appalling, funny, intelligent, memorable
Review: I couldn't stop reading this amazing story of self-mutilation. While her public life proceeds along conventional lines, Caroline Kettlewell's private existence is anything but placid. The contrast between the two results in a memoir of hypnotic intensity--reminiscent at times of a book Kettlewell mentions that she has read three times, Sylvia Plath's *The Bell Jar.* Thanks to Kettlewell's uncanny ability to observe herself, *Skin Game* also offers insights of uncommon penetration and humor. Individual scenes and remarks have stuck with me since I first read this book two weeks ago. Distinctive and so intensely felt as to be universally appealing, *Skin Game* is the wildest, most telling personal narrative I've read in many, many moons. First rate! Roger Lathbury
Rating: 
Summary: Skin Game
Review: I enjoyed the extreme details of the book, but as a cutter, some things were hard to read without the urge to cut myself. I think that people who have not cut before might also get the idea to cut because no matter how "happy" the book ends she was happy while she was doing it. Otherwise, it was a very entralling book on the senses and I really loved it.
Rating:
Summary: The Choice was mines...
Review: I finish reading Kettelwell's "Skin Games" It only took me about two weeks to read it. I have to say, I didn't like in the beginning when she refer to her scars as "Sins" but I did like how she threw in the whole Southern experience, "Scarlett O'Hara" and "Gone with the Wind," I'm a sucker for that culture. Kettlewell writing is a little strong for me. She made me, the reader, feel benith her; She uses such words expressing her cutting that to the mind of an English teacher would understand, but to the simple minded reader...she needed to use small words...She jumps from first person point of view to third persons. She writes of her life as a long script. She is the actor and this is her play. Such as her first wedding date when she writes "I show up on the Church's lawn, Half hour before it all begin. I came in shorts and a shirt, and I had my wedding dress thrown over my shoulder..." She's done research that can be apply to her own personal life. She writes about how she had to lie to tell people about her cutting, as "Did tell a lie to keep myself happy, or did I tell it not to worry them?" In the end, she brought everything together, when she writes "I stop cutting because I always could have stop cutting; that the pain and inelegant truth. No Matter how compelling the urge, the act itself was always a choice. I had no power over flood tite of emotions that drove me to that brink, but I had the power to decide whether not to step over. Eventually I decided not to......You have to make your journey, and bear its scars" I think that is so true and cleverly written. Its myself who is cutting and this is hard to admit. I am the one who is holding the razor to my flesh, and I am the one who cleans it up afterwards. I can't blame it on no one but myself. I don't have control over people's though, words and actions that can sometimes lead me to cut, but I am the one who is doing it. I can't (yet) control my thoughts and emotions, but I can control my actions. The choice was mine, and mine completely. I could have any prize that I desired. I could burn with the splendor of the brightest fire, Or else, I could choose time. Its like once you put your hand in the flame you can never be the same. There's a certain satisfaction in a little bit of pain. You learn form that. Life is a learning experience. So I actually took something away from Kettlewell Story. Granted it might not have been what I wanted...but its something that I always knew.
Rating:
Summary: Cuts both ways
Review: I finish reading Kettelwell's "Skin Games" It only took me about two weeks to read it. I have to say, I didn't like in the beginning when she refer to her scars as "Sins" but I did like how she threw in the whole Southern experience, "Scarlett O'Hara" and "Gone with the Wind," I'm a sucker for that culture. Kettlewell writing is a little strong for me. She made me, the reader, feel benith her; She uses such words expressing her cutting that to the mind of an English teacher would understand, but to the simple minded reader...she needed to use small words...She jumps from first person point of view to third persons. She writes of her life as a long script. She is the actor and this is her play. Such as her first wedding date when she writes "I show up on the Church's lawn, Half hour before it all begin. I came in shorts and a shirt, and I had my wedding dress thrown over my shoulder..." She's done research that can be apply to her own personal life. She writes about how she had to lie to tell people about her cutting, as "Did tell a lie to keep myself happy, or did I tell it not to worry them?" In the end, she brought everything together, when she writes "I stop cutting because I always could have stop cutting; that the pain and inelegant truth. No Matter how compelling the urge, the act itself was always a choice. I had no power over flood tite of emotions that drove me to that brink, but I had the power to decide whether not to step over. Eventually I decided not to......You have to make your journey, and bear its scars" I think that is so true and cleverly written. Its myself who is cutting and this is hard to admit. I am the one who is holding the razor to my flesh, and I am the one who cleans it up afterwards. I can't blame it on no one but myself. I don't have control over people's though, words and actions that can sometimes lead me to cut, but I am the one who is doing it. I can't (yet) control my thoughts and emotions, but I can control my actions. The choice was mine, and mine completely. I could have any prize that I desired. I could burn with the splendor of the brightest fire, Or else, I could choose time. Its like once you put your hand in the flame you can never be the same. There's a certain satisfaction in a little bit of pain. You learn form that. Life is a learning experience. So I actually took something away from Kettlewell Story. Granted it might not have been what I wanted...but its something that I always knew.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid memoir of living w/the all-encompassing desire to cut
Review: I found the book disturbing in its compelling, detailed descriptions of the author's desire to self-injure. It's difficult to read something to which one so intimately relates. Hopefully someone will read this and realize they are not alone. There are many of us with this unhealthy way of coping with emotions and life. I no longer engage in self-injury. It has been six months since the last time. There is hope available. Amazon, your list of books for people to read that read this book is sorely missing the book, Bodily Harm by Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader. Not only is it a compassionate, encouraging book, but is based on Conterio and Lader's program in the suburbs of Chicago established to exclusively treat Self-Injury and the book offers concrete, tried suggestions for help. Skin Game is being added to my library of well-written books on the subject, of which I have found few. It is not for the faint-of-heart, however.
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