Sleeveless

Joi Brozek

The first thing you need to know about Sleeveless is that it's a difficult book to read. Not in the way Henry James is difficult to read, but rather it's the kind of book that, periodically, you'll need to put down and walk away from for a while. Thankfully, it is also the kind of book that, once your head's back on straight, will draw you back to pick it up again.

Lisha is a high school girl in New York in the late eighties. She's chock full of emotional problems anyway, but as the book opens, we're treated to the spectacle of a DIY abortion performed on her younger sister which goes fatally wrong. From there, Lisha goes pretty much completely over the edge. The end result of this is that she turns cutting (one does not speculate as to whether she was a cutter before the incident, which is actually a pretty important point) into art-- which becomes the new fad at her school.

It's not nearly as linear as that synopsis (or the synopsis on the back of the book) makes it sound; it's far more a character study than a plot-driven novel. This, of course, is a good thing, especially as Lisha is not, in any way, a likable character. Identifiable, yes, but Brozek hasn't invested her with a single shred of likability. Lisha's treading of the line between sanity and insanity and the line between art and murder turn the book into an odd, appealing amalgam of William Herrick's ...kill memory... and Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, but without the plot-driven feel of the latter novel.

Good stuff, definitely worth your time.