“I don’t like the country. Creeps me out. In the country, dead bodies live in swamps, and ditches, and shallow graves.”
4.00 / 5.00 stars
A traumatized girl clothed only in a shower curtain sits alone on a bus, desperately searching for her missing brother. Told in a series of flashbacks and reflections, “The Tracy Fragments” follows fifteen-year-old Tracey Berkowitz down the rabbit hole of her life into a truly terrifying view of a girl suffering from mental illness and the consequences of her actions.
Wow! I’m not sure I have fully processed this book or that I ever will. On the surface, it’s about a teen girl with mental health issues looking for her missing brother. Once you dig deeper, Tracey becomes so much more complex – she’s a sad, lonely, possibly depressed teen who is basically terrorized at school for being different, and is ultimately responsible for losing the one person she’s ever truly cared about that also loves her fiercely – her younger brother. Mix all her teenage feelings about life and herself, sit in the self-blame and guilt of her brother’s disappearance and, likely, death, and you end up with a young girl who literally snaps and becomes a fragmented version of herself. If she was just depressed before, imagine what this experience did to her psyche, and that’s where you find this story.
Tracey is more than just an unreliable narrator. She’s building and creating a narrative she can live with. One where she’s not the “It” girl being whispered about in the halls at school. One where she’s cool and interesting and has an amazing boyfriend. One where all the shattered fragments of her self both exist and don’t exist, but always show her in the best of light.
This was a very challenging read for so many reasons, but I’m glad I finally read it. I’m not sure if I’d read it again, but I’d like to know more of what happens to her in the future. What happens when someone finds her or turns her in? Can she recover from all the traumatic experiences she’s had throughout this story?
This book is best read by anyone who doesn’t mind jumping head-first into the chaotic and unstable world of a teen beyond their breaking point.
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