Resource Book Reviews (suicide related)

[daley]

I have read a lot of suicide related books (both fiction and non-fiction) but after a while I don't remember what I read. So sometimes I write a summary/review. If we share these, others could find suicide books which might be interesting, illuminating, etc.

I had a hard time deciding whether this thread belongs in the suicide forums or on offtopic. I started by posting it on my profile, but that way, we wont be able to collect other book reviews in one place, so I posting that one here, and maybe more in the future.

What kind of reviews?
I guess there is no point in positing a "general" review which you could find on Amazon or Goodreads. A review should probably explain the book from a pro-choice perspective.

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So here is the first book: The Pact" by Jodie Picoult.

Part romance, part court case drama, and part mystery - two teenagers, living next to each other, having known each other since childhood - become a couple. Their supportive and successful parents are also friends with each other, meeting weekly at a restaurant. The boy is smart and a successful athlete. The girl is a painter and applying to top art universities. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, since she has known him so long, he feels to her more like a brother than a lover.
Oh, and also, she is pregnant.

She doesn't tell him that she is pregnant, but becomes suicidal, and convinces him to help her commit suicide with his father's gun. Although he tries to dissuade her, he helps her because he loves her and identifies with her pain, even though she never explains to him why she is depressed. I would not even consider this a "pact", as he did not want to commit suicide.

It's a page turner for sure, but it isn't pro-choice. I generally found the motivation for suicide, and depression unbelievable. But since we are talking about teen suicide, and I have never been a pregnant teen, what do I know. I am also probably jaded by all the depression stories I have read in ash related lists all these years.

Perhaps the point that most interested me is about how the boy motivates his helping her for her sake, in spite of it being against his own interests.

 

[daley]

Trying to find books about suicide pacts, I read The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby.

Spoiler Alert
Plot summary: the story switches between two plot lines. In the present, Owen is going to
USA, to the funeral of his friend Zach, who committed suicide. He meets Zach's family, and his Sister Vera.
In the past, Zach and Owen are learning philosophy in England. Zach is a charismatic
intellectual, and wants to kill himself, purely due to philosophical reasoning. Owen isn't
sure Zach is serious, but eventually, they wind up with two guns in a desolate location
aiming loaded guns at each other. Owen is just swept up in the situation and doesn't offer
resistance to Zach. His gun fires, Zach dies, and Owen covers up his tracks.
In the present he finds out that Zach's suicide did have motivation beyond pure
philosophical reasons, he loved his sister, and they were intimate.

It turns out this really isn't about a suicide pact, as one party doesn't really want to exit.
However, he is at the scene, and he actually pulls the trigger of a gun that kills
the person who did want to commit suicide, but it is sort of an accident.

Would I recommend this? Not sure. It seems well written. I wasn't bored.
The structure of switching between two plotlines is interesting.
Is it of special interest from a pro-choice perspective? Not really...

 

[daley]

Another book about suicide pacts.

All The Things We Never Said by Yasmin Rahman is for young adults. I am not a young adult, but sometimes such books can be fun. Didn't really enjoy this one though.

Three girls, in their teens, meet via a site that organizes suicide pacts called mementomori .
They are matched, and then instructed to physically meet. They get assignments
from the web site.

One girl is depressed, another was recently in an accident that put her permanently in a wheelchair, the third has been forced upon by her mom's boyfriend. The story is from a first person perspective, switching between the three girls.

The first assignment is to write a suicide note. The second is to prepare their own funeral.
At this point the site seems helpful. But meanwhile, the girls meeting up provides support they needed.
In a third assignment the site instructs them to physically hurt each other as a preparation for suicide.
The girls decide the site is malicious, and due to the support they have offered each other abandon their plans of suicide.

When the girls fail to submit their tasks to the site, the site starts to hack into their lives, and their computers, trying to mess with them.

By the end of the story, they solve all problems with their parents, confess about their contacting the site, and police intervene, everything neatly resolved.

So this is a very pro-life book. But this is a young adult book, and the girls are teens, so the book makes sense
the way it is. Issues resolve once they open up and start talking, first between the girls, and then with their parents. That's fine, it just wasn't interesting to me.

 

[daley]

The final book I read about suicide pacts is : Suicide Pact by John Monarch .

I liked this one a lot, but I couldn't find any reviews or discussions about it online.
Is it because he used an independent publisher service?
Is it because he just didn't know how to make it more publicly known?
Is it because the book just has a very small audience?

I don't know.

It's bleak, but has moments of hope, (which are eventually squashed), and suspense, and I identified with the main character.

The story is told from the perspective of "Coyote Black", who is very present as a storyteller.
I feel some kinship to him when he talks about various rules of fiction writing he has studied
and how he is blatantly breaking them in the book (though not really). He is an
unsuccessful writer, who has written many books and stories - none of which were
accepted for publication.

Sadly, I suspect this might be a bit autobiographical.

Five people who have met online on a web site, "bus-stop. com" go for a pact. ( It seems the author knows a bit about ash, or at least has done his research). They go for lighting charcoal in a van, but then back out, and decide to wait for another month, feeling that, by being in that group, they have secured their ending, and can do anything without repercussions.

As a group, they try to make some dreams come true, not really expecting that much though.
They bully an abusive father of one of the members, then try to blow up a place just to make a splash. However, even minor victories end up as utter failures.
There isn't much of a happy ending. There are no epiphanies. Even the one person who backs out of the pact is portrayed with resignation.

Not sure there is a moral to the story, but it does offer some catharsis.

By far the best suicide pact book I've read so far