Girl in Pieces
Kathleen Glasgow, 2016
Young adult RomanceContemporary fiction
A raw first-person novel about a girl learning to live inside a body and a past that have both been damaged, told with unusual tenderness.
Feels like grief and hope. About identity, memory and art.
A page from the book
Recovery isn’t restoration; it’s learning the shape of the pieces.
Everyone has that moment I think, the moment when something so momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there. Kathleen Glasgow.Girl in Pieces was Kathleen Glasgow's debut novel and became a New York Times bestseller.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Girl in Pieces like?
- Feels like grief and hope. About identity, memory and art.
- What should I read after Girl in Pieces?
- If you liked Girl in Pieces, try All the Bright Places (Jennifer Niven), The Book of Lost Names (Kristin Harmel) and Night Road (Kristin Hannah).
A taste of the feed
What a family argues about when it can't talk about death.
She’s shivering or shaking, I can’t tell which, and so I slowly inch my way toward her, hoping I don’t fall off before I get there, because the last thing I want to do is make a jackass out of myself in front of this girl. “I’ve made it clear I want cremation, but my mom doesn’t believe in it.” And my dad will do whatever she says so he won’t upset her any more than he already has, and besides, You’re far too young to think about this, you know your Grandma Finch lived to be ninety-eight, we don’t need to talk about that now, Theodore, don’t upset your mother.
All the Bright Places · Jennifer Niven
What is left of you once the labels are stripped away?
But we aren’t defined by the names we carry or the religion we practice, or the nation whose flag flies over our heads. I know that now. We’re defined by who we are in our hearts, who we choose to be on this earth.
The Book of Lost Names · Kristin Harmel
Time doesn't heal so much as hand you something to wear over the wound.
Maybe time didn’t heal wounds exactly, but it gave you a kind of armor, or a new perspective. A way to remember with a smile instead of a sob.
Night Road · Kristin Hannah
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