Rating: 
Summary: A verbalization of hard to explain feelings
Review: It's actually quite funny how I came across this book. I was at the Goodwill looking for old records and this book just happened to catch my boyfriends eye and he showed it to me. I bought it that day for $2. I read it the next night, I read it all that night. Caroline Kettlewell was able to explain her feelings, something I have never been able to do when it comes to depression, eating disorders and self-mutilation. My boyfriend has often asked me to explain how I feel but I haven't been able to find the words. Caroline Kettlewell found the words. She takes a mysterious and often mis-judged topic and gives it humanity. She sheds light on the lives of self-mutilators- they are not crazy people. There is such a stigma attached to depression, eating disorders, self-mutilation etc., "Skin Game" helps clear those stereotypes away by introducing you to a young girl with a otherwise healthy lifestyle and shows you what happens. EVERYONE should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Experience the mind of a troubled person
Review: Kettlewell has the courage to expose her inner mind to us as an attempt, on paper, to try to come to terms with her own disturbing behavior and her puzzlement, even contempt, for it. This is a brave book, as all such memoirs are, as well as a controlled one -- as much as a person who is out of control can be objective about their actions. She doesn't come to sufficient conclusions, however, about her self-mutilation. Perhaps that was not her intent, since this is memoir, not psychiatry. Low self-esteem certainly played a part, as we can see from her narrative, and is probably derived from extreme media influences. Based on media/society, our bodies whether plump or thin or thinner are never good enough, our faces are never good enough, our minds and hearts and actions are never good enough. Young people today are suffering from these stressful messages that really cut to the core of who/what a person is, how we define ourselves, what value we have in others' eyes -- all of which are important to adolescents. Cutting may be a way of agreeing with society that we don't have value hence the actual act (the destructive slash of the razor), then finding that we do have value because we feel something real (pain) and see something real (bodily damage). Or it might be a version of the slow suicide also present in society -- from eating disorders, thrill seeking, drug or alcohol overuse, even indiscriminate sexual relations. Cutting reminds me of the idea of a scorpion stinging itself nearly to death when surrounded by a ring of fire. Social stresses, as well as an inability to function at physical and mental wellness levels due to poor nutrition or depressed immune systems and even emotional depression, are so severe today. It is not surprising that adolescents are the most vulnerable. They are most susceptible because they are just leaving the influence of their parents for experiences with the outside world on the way to developing themselves as persons/adults. The messages they get from exploitative media, competitive peers, and an overall disinterested society do not make for normal emotional development, as we can see in Kettlewell's intensities. Cutting, in a way, is a cry for attention and love/self-love -- things no longer readily available but essentials for human development and survival. I'm sorry the author had to endure what she did, but pleased that she did survive into what can be a happy, productive adulthood. As a word to the author or to anyone suffering this sort of damaging behavior/need, many of us have grown up under very difficult, unloving circumstances -- it is possible to endure and make the most of your life, finding pleasure and happiness as independent adults. For anyone enduring self-destructive behavior, this book is a good read to help you find illumination about yourself and not feel so alone. Anyone interested in self-mutiliation will find this book a well-written adventure through the pain and confusion of modern adolescence.
Rating: 
Summary: This book went nowhere
Review: Memoir is one of my favorite genres, but this book was so disjointed I just couldn't get into it. The author throws in random chapters in her life but never explains how they relate to her cutting. She never explains what events motivate her to take a razor to her skin. A memoir is supposed to be intimate, but in this book the author as an adult seems so detached from her adolescent self. If she doesn't know what made her cut, why did she write a book about nothing? There are no epiphanies here. Also the book is written in an annoying College English Term Paper "Look at me" style. (Too many similes, metaphors, cutesy modifiers, etc.)Completely uninspiring. I give 2 stars because I enjoyed the chapters about growing up in Rural Virginia. For a good memoir, read "Angela's Ashes" or "Even Dogs Go Home To Die."
Rating:
Summary: A very good read
Review: My mother got me this book a few months ago to help me understand self-mutilation better. As soon as I started it, I began to realize that I loved it. Kettlewell was able to express her emotions very well. I loved the way she expressed her feelings. It can be a bit graphic in parts (i.e. describing the way it looked and felt to cut), but it's definitely something that self-mutilators and their friends should read.
Rating:
Summary: Getting to know the Cutter
Review: My sister is a cutter and when I first found out early last year, I immediately got onto the internet to search for answers. This book reads beautifully and has helped me understand some of the feelings that my sister may have and the reasons she has chosen to do, what she does. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in knowing how cutters actually feel.
Rating:
Summary: let me understand
Review: Skin Game is an excellent memoir. The writing is of high quality and the story is fascinating in a somewhat lurid kind of way. This girl's story evokes empathy in the reader and easily keeps the reader's attention throughout. The description of the cutting itself was fascinating and utterly straightforward- she cut because it made her feel better, like a form of self-medication. This same blunt and straightforward logic is present throughout the book and contributes to its high quality. An excellent read. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".
Rating:
Summary: Amazing--Moving and understanding
Review: Skin Game was a book that explained cutting in a way that was frank and honest without being blunt and rude or overbearing. It was wonderfully worded--I almost felt as though I was reading a novel instead of an autobiography at times. Though it can be a bit graphic at times, it is this honesty that adds to the books overall character. I simply adored it--it's the best book I've read on Self Injury yet. Happy Reading.
Rating:
Summary: close but no cigar
Review: The book is well written, gramatically correct and even a bit wordy in places. But I really see no need for anyone to read it. Maybe I'm wrong, but the book was just not what I expected. It was like....ok, so? yes, you lived at a boarding house, you cut yourself...and? To me, the book left something to be desired, perhaps an ending that one could grasp.
Rating: 
Summary: With Blade in Hand, Kettlewell Plays Psychic Dodgeball
Review: There's no doubt in my mind that Kettlewell's intentions in writing this book were sincere. She writes well, if a tad melodramatically (which may appeal to teens, but I'm full-grown and found it overwrought in places). In terms of retelling the physical realities of her world, she is quite forthcoming, and one gets the sense that she tells her story to get her emotional truth out there, in hopes of universalizing the experience of self-harm. This can't be easy, when you consider that like most people who self-harm, coping with and facing emotional treachery is difficult for her. Been there, I know of which I speak.That said, for a book that aims to lay bare her emotional and psychic self, she *totally* wusses out on making any kind of connection between her behavior and her thought processes, and how they evolve over time. So we get this chapter-after-chapter replay of her history as a self-harmer, then, at the end, la la la, "Oh I know it ain't what ya want to hear, but BY GOLLY, the doctor plopped my newborn child in my arms, and I *just plum stopped cutting*! Because I *could*" Please. This evinces either lazy writing or lazy self-analysis. Surely, there was some useful revelation, some change in thought pattern or self-concept that led her to stop harming herself. Something inside her must have changed, because her external behavior did. Can't have the former without the latter. I guess this is a useful book if you want to read how cutters cut, or to be assured that other people do what you do yourself, but as far as I'm concerned, for an author who reveals her self-harming behavior in almost pornographic detail to totally stint on any useful revelation about how she pulled back on said behavior constitutes a wimp-out of a magnitude far greater than any stress-evading swipe with a blade. What could have been both revealing and reassuring just seems like another self-evasion, wrapped around advertisements for Wilkinson Bond products. Bummer.
Rating:
Summary: The bitter truth
Review: This book describes what no one wants to acknowledge. The truth. The truth of, girls especially, being so caught up in the media's force which then can be said to lead them, if not alreay there, into their own deminision of hell. This includes being so unhappy with yourself that you find mutilating your body the only way to relieve some pain the troubled world has pressed upon you. Read this and wake up. It's happening everywhere, to the people you wouldn't expect.
|
