Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford

Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 out of 5

I'm not crazy. I don't see what the big deal is about what happened. But apparently someone does think it's a big deal because here I am. I bet it was my mother. She always overreacts.

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. Clearly, this is all a huge mistake. Forget about the bandages on his wrists and the notes on his chart. Forget about his problems with his best friend, Allie, and her boyfriend, Burke. Jeff's perfectly fine, perfectly normal, not like the other kids in the hospital with him. Now they've got problems. But a funny thing happens as his forty-five-day sentence drags on: the crazies start to seem less crazy.

Compelling, witty, and refreshingly real, Suicide Notes is a darkly humorous novel from award-winning author Michael Thomas Ford that examines that fuzzy line between "normal" and the rest of us. - Goodreads

Suicide Notes is told from the POV of Jeff, a fifteen year old kid who wakes up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, on New Year's Day, after attempting to take his own life. His arms are bandaged, his mind is kind of a mess and Jeff finds himself thrown into an entirely new situation; he's forced to interact with the other kids in his ward and talk to a psychiatrist about his problems.

Despite the incredibly difficult subject matter, this book manages to be funny - Jeff is cynical, observant and always ready with a sarcastic remark. His observations about the world around him are always accompanied with dry, black humour and it really adds to the tone of the book. Each character has their own tragic past as well as a host of problems but they manage to offset the bleakness in their lives with laughter, which is true of the human condition tbh. People mask their pain with laughter and this is a theme that runs throughout this book.

We're not told why Jeff has been admitted or what the other patients are suffering from - the plot builds gradually to the reveal, although there are clues in the text. Every character is a mystery unto themselves but what sets Jeff apart is his adamant belief that he doesn't belong in the ward. It is a bleak but powerful novel about the human psyche and what drives young kids to the most extreme actions - Jeff goes through a huge amount of development as a character in this novel and, at least to me, it is a massive statement about the kind of world we live in, when kids can feel more accepted in a confined ward than out amongst society.

This was definitely one of my favourite reads of the year so far.