A number of recent books by journalists and therapists have probed the social and psychological forces behind the alarming practice of self-mutilation; this unflinching memoir tells readers what it feels like. Caroline Kettlewell made her first attempt at age 12 with a Swiss Army knife, too dull to perform satisfactorily, but she quickly graduated to razor blades. "There was a very fine, an elegant pain," she writes of her initiation. "In the razor's wake, the skin melted away ... then the blood welled up ... the chaos in my head spun itself into a silk of silence." Describing her tense but not unusually difficult youth, the author doesn't spend a lot of time trying to figure out why she was so unhappy, concentrating instead on making palpable her sense of dread and terror of being out of control, emotions relieved by the act of cutting. Some readers may wish for more self-analysis, but others will find Kettlewell's austere prose and sensibility refreshing. "I kept cutting because it worked. When I cut I felt better, " she explains. "I stopped cutting because I always could have stopped cutting." Not the fanciest way to put it, but those sentences, like the entire book, have the cadences of "the plain and inelegant truth." --Wendy Smith


From Publishers Weekly
Following last year's A Bright Red Scream by journalist Marilee Strong, Cutting by psychotherapist Steven Levenkron and Bodily Harm by self-injury treatment program directors Karen Conterio, Wendy Lader and Jennifer Kingson Bloom, this memoir is touted as the first personal account of compulsive self-mutilation. However, Kettlewell's story leaves more questions unaddressed than it answers. Having regularly cut her body with razor blades for most of her life, at age 36 she does not seem to have enough distance from her actions to fully understand them. Searching for a reason for her behavior, she writes about the distress and anxiety she felt during most of her childhood in rural Virginia, where her educated Northern parents were rarities. Unsure if her misery was justified, Kettlewell never talked about it, instead escaping by cutting her arms and legs, which allowed her to focus only on the present moment, the certainty of blood and pain. She still doesn't know whether she is entitled to the mental anguish she continues to suffer, and the bulk of the book, by detailing her misery, simply begs the question.We learn surprisingly few details about her lifeAa first marriage is summarized in a few sentences; her eating disorder in a few pages; her parents, second husband and child are never fully characterized. The text jumps repetitively and illogically between episodes, occasionally registering confusion at the level of the sentence structure ("Which one of us did I lie to protect?" is typical), and rife with maudlin metaphors and similes ("summer fell across my lap like a corpse"). Although Kettlewell's story shows courage in the writing, it will make most readers feel like voyeurs. (July) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A memoir of self-mutilation by a woman who grew up cutting herself with razors in an attempt to relieve the depression and anxiety she felt. Kettlewell first learned that cutting herself with a razor blade gave her a feeling of calm when she was 12. An insecure child growing up in an uncommunicative family, plagued by ever-present anxiety, she derived comfort from making small, deliberate cuts on her upper arms, legs, ears, and anyplace else on her body that could be hidden from the eyes of teachers, friends, and parents. Self-mutilation took her from the hurricane of her life into its eye: ``All the chaos, the sound and fury, the uncertainty and confusion and despairall of it evaporated in an instant, and I was for that moment grounded, coherent, whole.'' To a certain extent, her story is fascinating. Since various forms of self-mutilation, like eating disorders, plague a distressingly large segment of the population, its at least sociologically relevant to read about one persons pathology. The shock of Kettlewells story is not the fact that she used to cut herselfin this talk-show culture readers are not so easily surprisedbut that she has chosen to tell her story at all, after successfully hiding her disorder for so many years. The same self-deprecation that caused the author to consider her depression out of proportion to her problems, combined, perhaps, with the urge to protect others who allowed her to keep her cutting secret, keeps her account oddly restrained, and sometimes gives it the flavor of a therapeutic exercise or a magazine article. When she writes that as a teenager she displayed ``a public self whose job it was to distract attention from any evidence of that other me, she seems unaware that the public self is still present in this book. Timely, and valuable for its insight into the cutters psyche, but with a remove that prohibits empathy. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

In Skin Game, Caroline Kettlewell offers a glimpse into the disturbing form of self-mutilation known as cutting. It's estimated that as many as three million adolescents, mostly girls, are afflicted with the disorder that fosters this behavior; Kettlewell's account of her own battle to overcome this obsessive, self-destructive behavior is a moving and insightful one.

ANNOTATION

"The author's own story about living with and overcoming 'cutting' is a poignant account of the struggle to survive this debilitating affliction that affects an estimated two to three million Americans."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Caroline Kettlewell's autobiography reveals a girl whose feelings of pain and alienation led her to seek relief in physically hurting herself, from age twelve into her twenties. Skin Game employs clear language and candid reflection to grant general readers as well as students an uncensored profile of a complex and unsettling disorder. "[This] mesmeric memoir examines the obsession with cutting that is believed to afflict somewhere around two million Americans, nearly all of them female," Francine Prose noted in Elle. "[Kettlewell's] language soars and its intensity deepens whenever she is recalling the lost joys and the thrilling sensation of sharp steel against her tender skin."

FROM THE CRITICS

Francine Prose - Elle

[This] mesmeric memoir examines the obsession with cutting that is believed to afflict somewhere around two million Americans, nearly all of them female...[Kettlewell's] language soars and its intensity deepens whenever she is recalling the lost joys and the thrilling sensation of sharp steel against her tender skin.

Laura Barcella - BUST Magazine

Skin Game is intriguing—it sheds light on a scary but significant modern phenomenon which primarily affects young women, and to which millions of people can certainly relate. Kettlewell helps her readers understand how she used cutting as a balm for her pain and anxiety, and how it worked to reduce "the chaos in [her] head...to a silk of silence."

Publishers Weekly

Following last year's A Bright Red Scream by journalist Marilee Strong, Cutting by psychotherapist Steven Levenkron and Bodily Harm by self-injury treatment program directors Karen Conterio, Wendy Lader and Jennifer Kingson Bloom, this memoir is touted as the first personal account of compulsive self-mutilation. However, Kettlewell's story leaves more questions unaddressed than it answers. Having regularly cut her body with razor blades for most of her life, at age 36 she does not seem to have enough distance from her actions to fully understand them. Searching for a reason for her behavior, she writes about the distress and anxiety she felt during most of her childhood in rural Virginia, where her educated Northern parents were rarities. Unsure if her misery was justified, Kettlewell never talked about it, instead escaping by cutting her arms and legs, which allowed her to focus only on the present moment, the certainty of blood and pain. She still doesn't know whether she is entitled to the mental anguish she continues to suffer, and the bulk of the book, by detailing her misery, simply begs the question.We learn surprisingly few details about her life--a first marriage is summarized in a few sentences; her eating disorder in a few pages; her parents, second husband and child are never fully characterized. The text jumps repetitively and illogically between episodes, occasionally registering confusion at the level of the sentence structure ("Which one of us did I lie to protect?" is typical), and rife with maudlin metaphors and similes ("summer fell across my lap like a corpse"). Although Kettlewell's story shows courage in the writing, it will make most readers feel like voyeurs. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Francine Prose - Elle

[This] mesmeric memoir examines the obsession with cutting that is believed to afflict somewhere around two million Americans, nearly all of them female￯﾿ﾽ[Kettlewell's] language soars and its intensity deepens whenever she is recalling the lost joys and the thrilling sensation of sharp steel against her tender skin.

Kirkus Reviews

A memoir of self-mutilation by a woman who grew up cutting herself with razors in an attempt to relieve the depression and anxiety she felt. Kettlewell first learned that cutting herself with a razor blade gave her a feeling of calm when she was 12. An insecure child growing up in an uncommunicative family, plagued by ever-present anxiety, she derived comfort from making small, deliberate cuts on her upper arms, legs, ears, and anyplace else on her body that could be hidden from the eyes of teachers, friends, and parents. Self-mutilation took her from the hurricane of her life into its eye: "All the chaos, the sound and fury, the uncertainty and confusion and despair—all of it evaporated in an instant, and I was for that moment grounded, coherent, whole." To a certain extent, her story is fascinating. Since various forms of self-mutilation, like eating disorders, plague a distressingly large segment of the population, it's at least sociologically relevant to read about one person's pathology. The shock of Kettlewell's story is not the fact that she used to cut herself—in this talk-show culture readers are not so easily surprised—but that she has chosen to tell her story at all, after successfully hiding her disorder for so many years. The same self-deprecation that caused the author to consider her depression out of proportion to her problems, combined, perhaps, with the urge to protect others who allowed her to keep her cutting secret, keeps her account oddly restrained, and sometimes gives it the flavor of a therapeutic exercise or a magazine article. When she writes that as a teenager she displayed "a public self whose job it was to distract attention from anyevidence of that other me," she seems unaware that the public self is still present in this book. Timely, and valuable for its insight into the cutter's psyche, but with a remove that prohibits empathy.