Red Tears

Joanna Kenrick

Faber and Faber

June 2007 $16.95

266p pb

ISBN: 978-0571234837

Red Tears is a very powerful novel; it is written by Joanna Kenrick. Previous to writing Red Tears, Joanna Kenrick researched scrupulously for the book by spending months speaking on websites and going to psychiatric sessions. The fact that she has met people with depression and studied depression has its effect on the book with the real-like situations and conditions of the protagonist.

Emily Bowyer is normal teenager; she’s in her final years of high school, has great friends, and a loving family. Her life is good and easy, until, in the space of a few weeks, her life completely turns around. Her friends abandon her, she drives her family away from her, and she finds that she can’t handle all the homework she’s getting. So she turns to self-harm. It starts as one cut on her upper arm with a pencil sharpener blade. It soon escalates into many cuts, almost once a day; one gets infected, and someone finds out.

Red Tears is an interesting novel. It deals with teenagers lives, how they see it as everyone against them, and nobody caring. If parents were to read this novel, it would remind them that it still sucks to be a teenager. This is one of the best books I have read in a while, I picked it up and I couldn’t put it down. I’d probably give it four stars out of five, and recommend it to people fifteen years old and over.

Brady, Year 10, Canberra, Australia