Books › The Burn Journals
The Burn Journals
384 pages
An unflinching, intensely personal descent into adolescent despair and the agonizing, courageous climb back to normalcy.
What it feels like
Reading this memoir is an intense, impossible-to-look-away experience that plunges you directly into the mind of a teenage boy in crisis. The narrative moves with a riveting, propulsive energy, balancing the harrowing physical realities of burn units and skin grafts with the profound psychological weight of surviving a suicide attempt. The prose is defined by its unflinching honesty and terrible clarity, stripping away any protective distance to leave the reader feeling exposed yet deeply connected to the author's vulnerability. It is a devastating but ultimately insightful journey through physical and psychological therapy, fear, and the daunting prospect of returning to everyday life. This book will profoundly move readers who appreciate raw, unvarnished explorations of adolescent mental health and the arduous struggle toward recovery.
- Mood
- harrowing
- vulnerable
- devastating
- intimate
- Tone
- unflinching
- honest
- intense
- exposed
- insightful
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- adolescent mental health · suicide survival · medical trauma and recovery · the struggle for normalcy
- The writing
- Unflinchingly honest and deeply personal, delivering terrible clarity with an exposed, riveting intensity.
- The arc
- Moves from the devastating depths of a suicide attempt through the agonizing process of physical and psychological recovery, toward a fragile but hard-won return to everyday life.
- Who it's for
- Readers seeking a deeply personal, unvarnished look at adolescent mental health, trauma recovery, and the raw reality of surviving a suicide attempt.
Content notes
- suicide attempt
- self-harm
- severe burn injuries
- medical trauma
- psychological distress
About the book
BRENT RUNYON WAS 14 years old when he set himself on fire. This is a true story.In The Burn Journals, Runyon describes that devastating suicide attempt and his recovery over the following year. He takes us into the Burn Unit in a children's hospital and through painful burn care and skin-grafting procedures. Then to a rehabilitation hospital, for intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. And then finally back home, to the frightening prospect of entering high school.But more importantly, Runyon takes us into his own mind. He shares his thoughts and hopes and fears with such unflinching honesty that we understand--with a terrible clarity--what it means to want to kill yourself and how it feels to struggle back toward normality.Intense, exposed, insightful, The Burn Journals is a deeply personal story with universal reach. It is impossible to look away. Impossible to remain unmoved.This truly riveting memoir is a spectacular debut for a talented new writer.From the Hardcover edition.
Description from Open Library.
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