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Book Description
I open the box Inside it is softness and steel. Tissues and blades
Product Description
Emily Bowyer is a normal, confident teenager - lots of friends, loving family and a good student. But beneath the surface she has a wretched secret. Because, for Emily, life isn't as much fun as it would appear. Her friends are going off her and her parents only seem to care about her troubled brother. Plus, she's expected to complete hours of homework, to excel in her exams, to be the perfect student. Tension, pressure, anxiety, anger and self-hatred. Where does it go when no one will listen? Emily has found a way to let it all out, a way to cope when life is overwhelming. But it is private. No one must ever find out . . . RED TEARS is a shocking, extremely well-researched novel about a girl who self-harms. It offers a bold and candid look at a phenomenon that afflicts thousands of Britain's teenagers. * RED TEARS is the first British YA novel that focuses solely on this phenomenon * More than 24,000 teenagers are admitted to hospital each year in the UK after deliberately hurting themselves. Recent research suggests that one in ten teenagers self-harm - so statistically every teacher has one or two self-harmers in their classroom at any time. *A Child Line study from the period April 2002 to March 2003 revealed that most callers (70%) were aged between 12 and 15. For almost half (46%) self-harm was an ongoing problem. 12% had been deliberately hurting themselves for five years or more.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Time wounded and scarred,
By Jerry Porter (Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Red Tears (Paperback)
Red Tears by Joanna Kenrick is an often disturbing account of how a young girl resorts to self-harm as a way of dealing with the pressures of her life. One of the strengths of the book is the way it seems deliberately to avoid any neat explanations or answers. The central character, fifteen-year-old Emily Bowyer, comes from a loving family, has plenty of friends and is academically successful. Her problems are those of an "ordinary" teenager; balancing her conflicting loyalties to friends and family and the increasing demands of her schoolwork. But Emily copes with these problems by cutting herself.
This is perhaps what makes Red Tears hit home so effectively. At the beginning Emily is stressed about her homework; a little over halfway through she is hospitalised for her self-inflicted wounds. There is a real sense that this could happen to anyone. In the first section of the book Kenrick builds from scenes of everyday life and school over ninety-odd pages of slowly mounting tension, until it becomes clear that her heroine is heading for disaster. Emily is a memorable character, and everything she says and does is completely believable. Behind this lies not only huge amounts of research (much of it in self-injurers' support groups) but, perhaps more importantly, Kenrick's ability to write with great sympathy and humanity. She sets out to get inside the mind of someone whose behaviour would seem insane and incomprehensible to many people, and she has succeeded triumphantly. One reviewer admitted to being "confused" by the character of Patrice, a friend of Emily's who is a domestic violence victim and also turns to self-harm for a while. I don't find this; her presence may complicate things a little but that adds depth and realism to the story. Although raising awareness of self-harm was always part of Kenrick's intention her characters come first, and she carefully avoids making them simplistic. The ending deserves a mention. It would be easy to fall into the traps of either unrelieved despair on the one hand or an improbably tidy "happily ever after" on the other, but Kenrick avoids both. At the end her outlook - and Emily's - is realistic but hopeful, and makes a touching conclusion after the pain and desperation that came before. Red Tears is not an easy read. The self-harm scenes are pretty explicit; necessarily so, though Kenrick is more interested in Emily's state of mind than in blood and shock tactics. She wisely warns that any self-harmers reading the novel should take responsibility for their safety. But it is a powerful experience and will be an eye-opener for many people.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very well-written, and extremely well researched.,
By
This review is from: Red Tears (Paperback)
This book doesn't just cover cutting, it also addresses the issue of depression. As someone who has never self-harmed, but has suffered from depression, I didn't expect to see so much of myself in Emily. It was rather hard to read in places, as it was a little too close to home, but I believe this is a good thing, as too many of us avoid our problems, hiding them ourselves and others, which for Emily and many others leads to cutting and other forms of self-harm.
There were things Emily thought or did that I remember doing as a confused, lost teenager, and at the time (and even now at nearly 20) I thought I was the only one who thought like that. Feeling inadequate, paranoid, not worthy of people's attention. Having people assume you're just fine and being too scared to ask for help, or worse, feeling like you don't deserve help; that you don't have a real problem. It was quite emotional reading her thoughts and looking back at myself, thinking exactly the same things. I wish I'd had this book five years ago. The book has no ridiculously positive ending, it's realistic. It lets you know that you can get better, but it also highlights that you have to help *yourself*. And you have to let people in. I don't want to gush, but I really think this book is just fantastic.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Red Tears: reviewed by Sebastian Le Maguet (12yrs),
By Sebastian Le Maguet (Abingdon UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Red Tears (Paperback)
'Red tears' is a BRILLIANT book which I couldn't put it down at home and at school, I just had to keep on reading it day and night.The way the book is written is very interesting because it is told from a self-harmers point of view, it shows how Emily (the self harmer)looks at life,people around her and how she copes with her trouble and misfortune. The last chapter was a fantastic ending. It wasn't a boring classical ending, which is a great change from the same old 'and they all lived happily after' ending. Emily takes whatever life throws at her step by step, which is great advice and help for self-harmers. This book makes me feel very emotional about people that can't get support and help from their families, unlike Emily. Red tears is a great book for people who don't quite understand what self-harmers go through,and how much help they need to restart their life. There are a couple of chapters that are only three lines long, which is great because even it may not have as much description and information on story line it has a short,sharp effect which really hammers in what you just read.
Overall this is a great page-turning adventure about a self-harmer who has a complicated life, This book will guarantee to satisfy all readers and keep them reading. Sebastian Le Maguet (12yrs)
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