Suicide Notes »

Michael Thomas Ford is the author of the teen novel Suicide Notes as well as several essay collections and adult novels, including Jane Bites Back. He lives in San Francisco with his partner and their five dogs.

Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year’s Day to find himself in the hospital. Make that the psychiatric ward. With the nutjobs. Never mind the bandages on his wrists, clearly this is all a huge mistake. Jeff is perfectly fine, perfectly normal—not like the other kids in the hospital with him. They’ve got problems. But a funny thing happens as Jeff’s forty-five-day sentence drags on: the crazies start to seem less crazy. . . .

Compelling, witty, and refreshingly real, Suicide Notes is a darkly comic novel that examines that fuzzy line between “normal” and the rest of us.

Publishers Weekly

Teens in a psych ward populate a novel that overcomes a predictable beginning to make a powerful emotional impact. Regaining consciousness after an aborted suicide attempt, the 15-year-old narrator thinks his parents have "overreacted" by placing him in a 45-day program in the "nuthouse" ("you know, where they keep the people who have sixteen imaginary friends living in their heads"). Readers might need patience as Jeff, the protagonist, goes through a period of denial, delivering sarcastic answers to his shrink, Dr. Katzrupus (Jeff refers to him as "Cat Poop") and holding himself aloof from the four other patients. But as Jeff begins to form relationships with these teens, Ford's (Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me) own strengths emerge: his characterizations run deep, and without too much contrivance the teens' interactions slowly dislodge clues about what triggered Jeff's suicide attempt. That Jeff's recovery depends on realizing and accepting that he's gay isn't explicit until the novel is almost over, that this novel goes beyond gay issues to address broader questions of identity is clear all along. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)

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