The glass girl by Kathleen Glasgow
The ‘glass girl’ is Bella, a 15 year-old struggling to cope with her parents’ bitter separation, continually swapping houses between them, dealing with her younger sister’s neediness, feeling invisible at school, mourning the recent death of her beloved grandmother, and devastated by the break-up with her boyfriend Dylan. The only relief is that which comes with the Sprodka, vodka mixed in a bottle of Sprite, vodka scored from a person willing to take the money and buy it for the hooded teenager waiting outside.
Scoring grog is a group thing that she and her friends do after school. But for Bella, it becomes the release that she can’t do without. After all, adults use alcohol to wind down after a tough day at work, why not kids? Without ever acknowledging it, Bella descends deeper and deeper into addiction until the day her mother finds her, unconscious with a smashed face from falling drunk onto the doorstep, after being dumped there after a party gone wrong.
The narration is Bella’s internal voice, her thoughts and fears, her self-justifications and anxieties. It is a very convincing account of the lived world of a teenage alcoholic. In the author’s note, Glasgow describes how as a teenager she ‘really, really, really, really liked drinking’. And there are many kids that do. She draws on real cases as we enter the world of rehabilitation with Bella. Recovery is not easy, things don’t all magically get better, happy ever after. It is a very tough path, and there are frequent relapses. Glasgow presents it all.
The glass girl is a very powerful exploration of many teenage issues: all kinds of addiction, peer pressure, cyberbullying, anxiety and loneliness. Glasgow’s writing style draws the reader in, and we live through Bella’s experience. This is an important book for young people which helps to create empathy both for those with addictions and those who need to step up and be the real friend that is needed, one who is prepared to call things out. It would make a worthwhile addition to the school library.
Other YA books by best-selling author Kathleen Glasgow include You’d be home now, How to make friends with the dark, and Girl in pieces.
Themes: Addiction, Alcoholism, Substance abuse, Anxiety, Rehabilitation.
Helen Eddy