Pieces of Me
A Novel
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The next gut-punching, compulsively readable Kate McLaughlin novel, about a girl finding strength in not being alone.
When eighteen-year-old Dylan wakes up, she’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize. The other people there seem to know her, but she doesn't know them – not even the pretty, chiseled boy who tells her his name is Connor. A voice inside her head keeps saying that everything is okay, but Dylan can’t help but freak out. Especially when she borrows Connor’s phone to call home and realizes she’s been missing for three days.
Dylan has lost time before, but never like this.
Soon after, Dylan is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and must grapple not only with the many people currently crammed inside her head, but that a secret from her past so terrible she’s blocked it out has put them there. Her only distraction is a budding new relationship with Connor. But as she gets closer to finding out the truth, Dylan wonders: will it heal her or fracture her further?
Kate McLaughlin’s Pieces of Me is raw, intimate, and surprisingly hopeful.
“Pieces of Me is a chilling, yet empathetic, look into Dissociative Identity Disorder. With her calm, pure, voice, Kate McLaughlin delves deep into the crevices of this misunderstood disorder and a young woman's mind. I had to keep reading not only to understand Dylan, the main character—but to understand all of the people inside Dylan’s head." - Hayley Krischer, author of Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf and The Falling Girls
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Frequent blackouts, time loss, and fuzzy memories are a few things that 18-year-old artist Dylan, a white college student from New Rochelle, N.Y., has coped with for years in this empathetic portrait of a mental health condition by McLaughlin (Daughter). When she wakes up in a stranger's apartment and learns that she's been missing for three days, Dylan panics. She is soon diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and discovers that numerous alternate personalities, or alters, have been cultivating entire lives for themselves during her memory gaps—and that their existence has been protecting her from memories of a childhood trauma she can't recall. Beginning in Dylan's anxious first-person voice, McLaughlin deftly integrates and fleshes out the various alters—collectively a system—and their histories across alternating perspectives via depictions of Dylan's art, journal entries, and surreal scenes set in the system's shared inner world. Jarring early transitions between Dylan's blackouts contribute to effectively off-kilter pacing, gradually mellowing once she sets boundaries with her alters. McLaughlin treats Dylan's system with compassion and renders scenes regarding sexual violence with care. An endearing budding romance and supportive characters round out this respectful and well-researched exploration of one teenager's experience living with dissociative identity disorder. Ages 13–up.
