Suicide Books

I first read Carlson's book about 3 years ago, and since then have re-read parts of it and given copies to friends who were struggling with the aftershock of suicide.

The title may be a little misleading; though I initially read the book because of a suicide, I discovered later that it could apply to any death that a reader may be coping with.

This guide addresses not only the grief and angst of suicide, but also deals with the minor details we may never think of until we really need them: What do you say to a grieving parent? Is it best to not say anything and avoid bringing up hurtful feelings? What about holidays and special occasions?

I found the book extremely helpful and enlightening. The hard-learned lessons that made the book possible shine through on every page. Carlson writes from experience and from the heart about a subject most of us are ill-prepared to deal with. I highly recommend this book.

This is the first book I have read about suicide since my sister's suicide about 5-6 weeks ago. Just a warning to others that Carlson's book is far from a generalist's view on suicide. There is a heavy concentration on identifying depression in youths and adolescents as a way to stem potential suicide risk. As a result, I ended up breezing through several sections that I just didn't find relevant. Other major concentrations in the book discuss parent/child relationships though for very young and adolescent children but again, not too relevant to my situation.

I first read this book about 4 years ago, and since then have gone back to look at passages that were particularly helpful to people struggling with the aftershock of suicide.

The title may be a bit misleading; although it's about suicide, it's also applicable to any death that a person may be dealing with. Carlson's book addresses not only grief and anxieties associated with suicide, but also the little details we don't think of until we really need them: What do you say to a person in grief; how do you handle anniversaries and special occasions when someone is surviving a loss, etc.

I found this book helpful and enlightening, especially knowing that Carlson learned all these details through experiencing a significant loss in her family through suicide. She writes not only from experience, but also from her heart. Technical how-to's are a dime a dozen. This one's different.

I liked this book. It has merit for older more mature readers that will get the concept of being honest and true. But I liked the author's book "TOES" a LOT better. I'm a school librarian and recommend this book for grades 5 and up.

Terpin Taft (what a great name) learns that lying has grave consequences and that telling the truth is not always easy. Tor Seidler effectively illustrates for young adults why stating your opinion and being honest is always the best policy in the long run. As the result of a lie Terpin causes the death (or believes that he is responsible) of an old man on the train. In order to avoid such tragic events in the future Terpin decides to only tell the truth. His brutal honesty is hard for family, friends, and teachers to take. When his girlfriend asks for his opinion on a paper, he tells her it is boring. He encourages a friend who is a pitiful football player, to concentrate on piano playing instead, and he tells the mayor of the town that her new project is destroying the environment. While the immediate consequences are negative - his friends and classmates bury him in snow and pelt him with snow balls - the reader learns at the end of the book that he has become the youngest Supreme Court Justice ever and is honored by everyone in his town. Terpin is well written and would be especially enjoyable for skiers (Terpin often ditches athletic practice to head off and ski). Socrates also plays an important role - Terpin comes to consider him a great friend. Terpin is a great book for young adults in a classroom setting, or a great book to share with your child.

How important is honesty? The main character in the book Terpin, a young boy by the name of Terpin Taft, wrestles with this question. What transpires afterward is a truly impressive study of the effects of honesty, frankness, and brutal honesty. While a short read, I must say that Terpin is one of the most significant and important books I have ever read. I have loaned it to many friends and relatives, and it always leads to interesting and poignant conversations. Sadly it seems that not many copies of Terpin currently exist. If you ever have the occasion to read this book I would strongly recommend you do so. It does something that all truly good books do. It makes one think.

Tribes is about a high school student, Percy, who is trying to cope with the suicide of his best friend and the death of his anthropologist father.

Percy wanders around his high school, an observer looking in, classifying his fellow students according to tribes: the Jock Tribe, the Logo Tribe, the Hockey Tribe (the book takes place in Canada, and the writer is a Canadian).

Percy cuts himself in the book, but there were few scenes that mentioned it, which is probably why I couldn't find any reference to this book as a cutting book except at my local library's web catalog.

There are two things I want to note that make this book differ from the other two books about cutting that I read (Cut by Patricia McCormick and Crosses by Shelley Stroehr) for my project. First, the author (in the voice of the main character) does a pretty good job of describing the origins of cutting without making it seem like a lecture. He takes an anthropological view that cutting is a ritual, more of a rite of passage and that cutting has existed all over the world throughout history. Percy describes his friend Elissa having "engaged in ritual body piercing, not for fashion, but in honor of ancient beliefs. Some African cultures believed that demon spirits fly up a person's nostrils and cause illness. To prevent this, she wore a nose ring."

Unlike the cutters of the previous two books I read, Percy practices piercing as a form of self-mutilation. His piercing occurs when he's overwhelmed and can't focus, or when he becomes upset about something. His self-injury is only mentioned four times in the novel, for a total of only several hundred words, but you get the sense it's a routine part of his life.

The main protagonist is a male, and that in-and-of-itself is notable, simply for the reason that male cutters are rarer than female cutters. While Percy did not, male cutters tend to also display aggressive behavior-acting out in class, stealing, and fighting-more than female cutters.

Percy is as unique a cutter as his story, which I enjoyed very much. I hope that it becomes more widely known and recognized as a part of the cutting genre.

it's REALLY fun but no way superfiscial because the narrator is a psychological mess, and as the story proceeds he changes from kooky to a touching, real character. his underlying problem and coping mechanism becomes as the story unfolds, and it's very interesting and different. i think high school flavor is dead right-- the cliques, the animosities between them. i recommend this book VERY highly.

Tribes is unlike any novel I've ever read. Percy's way of scientifically classifying his classmates is funny, yet serious at the same time. I think anyone who has ever pondered the universe or the meaning of life will find Percy's thoughts and the other characters' points of view intriguing. Arthur Slade creates a brilliant blend of light and thought-provoking sections. The twists and turns of the plot are excellent too. I would recommend this book to all teens who like reading.

Melissa Lion tells a very real story about an Alaskan girl named Marty in her senior year of high school whose joie de vivre is somewhat diminished by a summertime tragedy that has made the rest of her town uneasy and awkward around her. Marty feels trapped in her current life and unable to escape the judgments of her fellow villagers until she meets Catherine, a new arrival from California. Catherine encourages Marty to apply to college, to gather up her life, to start living again. Now all that remains to be seen is...will Marty allow herself to move on?

I thought that Upstream was an interesting read because it gave me a look into the daily life in a place I've never been. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to try out a book that, while not challenging, moves past what one normally would read in a book. Melissa Lion gives readers the essential details that allow them to connect somewhat to the characters. Although the ending was the best possible for this book, I was still left "hanging" because all save one of the characters that the book closes on were introduced in the final chapter of the book. Other than this, the ending fit the book very well.

Reviewed by a student reviewer for Flamingnet Book Reviews
www.flamingnet.com
Preteen, teen, and young adult book reviews and recommendations

Title: Upstream

Entertaining Read ........ Recommended ............. 4.5 stars

The Review
The narrative opens in a small Alaska with someone sneaking into the window. The house is empty. Marty lays her sleeping bag on the floor and lays down to sleep. The new school year will begin and Marty, Martha, will be facing it without her boy friend Steven. Marty, her sisters Gwen and Dottie live with their working Mom and sometime when home from the Coast Guard dad. Marty has had the summer to come to grips with Steven's death. School begins, a new owner for the movie theater where Marty works comes to town, life goes on. Then, Fish and Game begin to make noises about re opening the investigation into Steven's death. He was well versed in living in the wild and they are wondering how he and several more recent campers have come to be the victim of an accidental shooting. Winter melts into spring. Marty sends applications to colleges and faces the questions put to her by Fish and Game. Life goes on.

Writer Lion has wrought an appealing mystery certain to please the young adult market. Overflowing with exhilarating settings, a genuine conundrum and believably human characters Upstream is an engaging read. Writer Lion's adroitness for the human situation and her cloudless portrayal haul the reader right into the chronicle. Lion possesses a perception for the human inner self which she puts to skillful use to furnish a narrative filled with tingle, sentiment and coming of age. The reader is drawn into the tale from the opening lines as we accompany Marty into the now deserted home of her dead boy friend and that interest is held tight right down to the last page where we find Marty now grown up, finished with college and following her life dream.

Upstream is writer Lion's second work and is a commendable effort. That writer Lion has done her homework into people, activities, and tenor of youth is manifest as the anecdote unfolds. Lion uses occasional flash back type scene setting to explain what has led to Steven's demise. Brimming with a profusely fabricated chronicle, snappy, fulfilling conversations, in addition to a judiciously interwoven theme regarding a young woman coming to grips with life and herself Upstream is an agreeably composed work. Characters presented by writer Lion are creditable, discussion is acceptable as it serves to move the narrative along from beginning to end.

An indisputable winner for the target audience of young adult to adult aficionados of `slice of life' accounts. The well written account has ample action to satisfy readers. Upstream is an superb choice for the middle to high school level home sch0ol or public school libraries, home library shelf as well as gift book selection for readers ages 13 and up who possess good reading skills and have an enjoyment for a gripping tale well told. Oblique references to teenaged sexual activity will served to preclude some readers from enjoying the book.

Enjoyed the read, happy to recommend.

I received a hard back edition for review.

Reviewed by: molly martin
http://www.angelfire.com/ok4/mollymartin
http://www.AuthorsDen.com/mjhollingshead
20+ years California classroom teacher

Genre: YA fiction
Author: Melissa Lion
Line/Publisher Wendy Lamb Books/Random House
Random House, 1745 Broadway Avenue of Americas NYC, NY
ISBN: 0 385 74643
Available : $15.95 Amazon

From the opening paragraph of UPSTREAM, Melissa Lion's quietly powerful second novel, we know that Marty Powers's boyfriend, Steven, is gone. "I want to be with him, though I know he's not here," she tells us, climbing through the window of his family's deserted house in their tiny hometown of Homer, Alaska. We soon learn that he died over the summer, although we don't know how. Marty was with Steven that day, but she has kept the circumstances of his death shrouded from her family, her classmates and everyone else.

Slowly, over the course of the novel, Marty reveals the details of what happened. UPSTREAM, though, is less the story of Steven's mysterious death than of Marty's healing. She begins her senior year of high school withdrawn, avoiding the stares and whispers of the curious. Then she meets Katherine, a recently divorced 28-year-old who has just moved to town from California and bought the old movie theater where Marty works. It takes time for Marty to truly open up to her, but as their friendship deepens, she recognizes in Katherine a sadness similar to her own: "She misses someone. Maybe someone in her old life. Someone I'll never know."

Marty introduces the California girl to the rhythms and joys of Alaska life, such as the patience and strength needed for sockeye-salmon fishing, and the thrill of the hard-won catch. Katherine literally brings sunshine into Marty's world. She paints the dingy movie house walls a buttery yellow and organizes a beach movie marathon on the shortest day of the long Alaska winter. But as with Lion's first novel, SWOLLEN, these bright spots don't entirely eclipse the dark. There's no magical remedy for Marty's pain, and like the Alaska spring that brings just eight more minutes of light each day, Marty's recovery is incremental, and so natural, that she almost doesn't notice it.

UPSTREAM is firmly rooted in Marty's home state, so that the Alaska wilderness itself becomes another character: the two bull moose jousting in a meadow near where Marty takes Katherine fishing; the round red berries, Steven's favorite, that taste exactly like watermelon; the deep, cloudy blue of the river at Cooper Landing. "I'm grateful for the glaciers and the runoff and that I'll always be reminded of the color of his eyes," Marty says toward the end of the book. And as readers, we're grateful to Melissa Lion for sharing with us the beauty and the melancholy of Marty's world.

--- Reviewed by Carolyn Juris

Four teen-year-old Rachel lost her brother sever years ago. She went into his old room one night and found his diary. She decided to read the diary so that she could get to know her brother more. Everyone was always telling Rachel how her brother was the most prefect person in the world. They always talked about how he was a local track star and an A+ student. Rachel had to find out for herself if all of this was true. When she read her brother's diary she found out that, surprisingly, all of that gossip was not true. Jake (Rachel's brther) was not the perfect person that everyone saw him as. He hated the people around him and most of all, he hated himself. All that Jake wanted to do was die, so on the night of graduation' Jake floured his car and drove himself off of a cliff. Meanwhile, Rachel had many problems too. Her best friend ,Adrien, was leaving town for Africa, and her parents were talking about moving. In the book, Rachel becomes best friends with her mom's best friend's son. His name is Bowman. Bowman is a senior in high school, the same age that Jake was when he died. Bowman is not sure what he wants to do with his life, whether or not he wants to go to college, or if he wants to get a job. Bowman has alot of anger bottled up inside. He is feeling pressured from everyone, so he burns down a historical mill in the town as a way to purify hus feelings and get rid of all of that bottled up anger. He then has to be put on trial (With Rachel's mom as the judge of that trial) to decide on whether or not he will graduste. I really liked this book. It was very practicle in the scense that it dealt with realistic issues. The book was really good for teenagers because they could easily apply themselves to it. I give Walk Softly, Rachel five stars!

This is a really nice book. Rachel wanders into her dead brothers room and happens upon his journal. Journal entries are combined with happenings in Rachel's life to illustrate how hard it is not only to truly listen to one another, but how hard it is to let go when the time comes.

I was expecting more from Jake's journal, that he had some sort of deep, horrible secret, but that wasn't to be. Thinking about it, there was a lot of me in Jake- or, I should say, the teenager I was with horrible undiagnosed and untreated depression and anxiety. Life was rough for me, people kept pushing me without giving me direction and without acknowledging that I needed help, and it all felt like some huge horrible out-of-control whirlpool, much like Jake describes. Hard to relive that kind of stuff.

But it's a good story, one that gently leads the reader to the conclusion, without being condescending or in-your-face as some teenage novels about death can be. Very good, I highly recommend this.

�Walk Softly Rachel�
Can you imagine losing your brother, then your best friend moves away, and you share the same name as your mother and grandmother? Well that is the life of Rachel the 3rd. At the age of seven Rachel had lost her brother and then at the age of thirteen her best friend Adrian moves away to Africa. Rachel thought that nothing in her life was exceptional and that she herself was nothing but a string bean. Through out the entire book Rachel is convinced the death of her brother was her fault because at the age of seven she hardly knew her brother. That is until she meets and falls for her enemy�s brother, Bowman. Bowman was a sixteen-year young man who had no idea that Rachel felt the way she did, and could hardly care less until� Well I don�t want to give it a way. Then Rachel�s family thinks that they want move, and Rachel thinks that it�s a bad idea because all of their memories of Jake [her brother] were in this house and she and her brother had grew up in this house, she told her parents that their spirits were melted into this house. So I think this book is very good and is readable for middle school kids and adults because it deals with real life situations that happen in every day life.

I never even used this book because Water Bugs and Dragonflies was such a great one. This book is better for the elementary-aged child and above. Don't be shy about skipping a page if you feel it's too much information for your child.

I thought this was a good book for children to help them better understand the cycle of life and the process of life and death. It is written from the Christian view point and offers a clear understanding to the many questions children often ask about this difficult subject. It also gives the reader both simple and peaceful advice to help children better understand the teachings of the Bible.

Do yourself a favor and disregard reviewer WES. This guy is a devout atheist who in his own sick hypocritical way is no different then a religious nut job trying to convert the world over. The only difference between WES and them is that WES, in his own pathetic little way, is trying his very best to convert everyone over to his thumb sucking "atheist club". For someone who is so steadfast in knocking down a belief in God he sure spends a lot of time reading various Christen writings and writing reviews about it (see his other reviews). Why waste your time reading and writing about something that doesn't exist? Instead of reading about how a Christen views life WES, perhaps you should get one. Anyone truly secure in their own beliefs isn't compelled to continually belittle another's beliefs. Maybe you should try a few good books dealing with paranoia, and how it relates with your obvious sexual insecurities and inadequacies based on some of your other reviews.

This is an excellent resource for individuals looking to explain to youngsters about death, and life after death, from a Christian and biblical perspective. It helps to provide easy to understand answers of hard questions that children (and adults) may wonder about. We have a close friend of the family dying of cancer and this book has been invaluable in making the process of explaining to my children the concepts of death, burial, resurrection of the soul, and heaven much easier. The illustrations are very effective.

I am not an expeienced reviewer.I felt an overwhelming desire to share my feelings on this new artist.Its not often that a new writter comes along that stops you in your tracks ,or has you turning page after page and wanting more.I really felt like Shane takes the reader on a vivid ride, heart wrenching ,hummorous and incredibally deep. He has a wonderful way of expressing himself ,and he's not bad on the eyes.

Im a addict to great literature and I rarely find something that is so raw and almost wrenching at the same time that moves me. It almost hurts reading what most dont want to face when Brolly puts it so brutually lifes adventures, awakenings and the harshness we all go through. Also all the superficialness of life and the person within ourselves we are faced with and come to terms with. I would definitely recommend spending the extra dollar for this book...

Actor Shane Brolly recently starred in the movie "Underworld", and while the movie did reasonably well at the box office, critics did not attribute that sucess to his performance. Perhaps an inexperienced actor, Brolly is a natural poet. Totally raw, his images and language accost readers, confronting them with themes and ideas so common to the human experience that we trudge through life ignoring them. Brolly's poems remind us what it is to be frustrated with our own apathy. He screams at readers about his inability to escape the net of expectations; he wants to do so much - be so much - and yet, those very wants keep him from placing his first step. In the face of such magnitude of purpose, where can he begin?
Particularly effective is a poem entitled "two doves" which dazzles in its simplicity. Brolly is a man to watch; his rough words name-call and curse, and his purpose whispers almost silently.

Book had a great layout and was exactly what I needed for class. The CD/DVD included was a big help too.

This book is very useful if you are taking an abnormal psych class or if you are considering a career in mental health.

Lornie Walker takes a journey into her past to understand where she is going. Along the way, she shares intimate and honest feelings about her sister, a woman she loved. Lornie explores her feelings about her sister and tries to make sense of a senseless act of suicide.
This is an easy read on a lazy weekend when you want to appreciate that life is not easy but have hope that there is always a future for those who know that the secret to living is to love.

I was touched by the honesty of the writing, the pain, and ultimately the healing of Ms. Walker. If anything, I found myself walking with her and wanting more than the glimpse that was sometimes offered. I work in mental health and have experienced, second hand, the devastation left after a loved one suicides. Kudos to Ms. Walker for sharing her life with others.

Coming after ASSIGNMENT: DISASTER, and ASSIGNMENT: TREASON, this 3rd Sam Durell book, Gold Medal #621, was released in November, 1956. And from this reviewer's vantage point, it is the best of the three.

Starting with a night parachute drop outside Leningrad, Sam meets up with underground people, then quickly moves on to Moscow. Every step he takes seems to be taken also by Russian secret police. To escape the police and carry out his mission he is forced to move on to an area close to Kharkov in the middle of an off-limits missle base.

The time period is of course what we commonly call 'cold war' and the Russians have ICBM missle sites all over their country. Sam has a map of the locations and needs to get this map back to Washington. One high ranking Russian wants to loose an ICBM without permission or authorization in hopes of bringing on nuclear confrontation and war with the west, and America in specific. Working with these few renegades, Sam needs to bring about a satisfactory solution for both Russia and America.

Though I've read many of the books in the Durell series, I find this one to be one of the more realistic ones, due to Sam being continuously in the field, and behind enemy lines. Though Sam's character is not yet fully developed, as future books will attempt, we see enough of his mettle to know he is our kind of agent.

If you have any interest in realistic espionage fiction, then this book may be of interest to you.

Semper Fi.

This is the 3rd of the Sam Durell books. Durell is sent to Russia to stop a renegade general known only as "Z' from launching WW3. His mission brings him into contact with a group in the underground who are loyal comminuists looking to stop Z.
The 50s mix of dedicated American agent working with loyal Communists is a nice switch from the usual red-hatng fiction of the era. Aarons does a good job of maintaining suspense until the end when Z is finally finished and Durell is trapped by the MGB (50s KGB).