Cut by Patricia Mccormick

McCormick, P. (2000). Cut. New York: Scholastic.
ISBN 0-439-32459-9
151 pgs
Format: Book
Genre: Realistic
Classification: Fiction
Age level: Age 13 and up

Reader's annotation
Fifteen-year-old Callie is spending some time at Sea Pines, a psychiatric facility, where her parents sent her because she cuts herself to relieve her difficult emotions surrounding issues in her family life. Much of the book is a description of daily life in the facility told through the thoughts of the protagonist.

Summary
The novel Cut is set in a mental institution called Sea Pines, and the residents are a group of troubled young women, Most of the story is the internal dialog of a teenage girl named Callie who has a problem with cutting herself in order escape psychological pain she is experiencing related to family problems and her brothers’ health problems. Callie resists the treatment for a long time, refusing to speak in group therapy and generally disliking everything about the facility but eventually opens up in therapy and begins to explore the strong emotions that cause her to harm herself.

Notes
Cut is a short but ambitious novel similar to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg in that is deals with a difficult, painful issue that the protagonist cannot articulate. Cutting is a disturbing and growing problem among teenage girls, so the novel is timely and it lends a sympathetic voice to a little understood problem.

Awards and honors
ALA Quick Pick for YA Readers
A NYPL Book for the Teen Age