Charm & Strange
When you’ve been kept caged in the dark, it’s impossible to see the forest for the trees. It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . . In Stephanie Kuehn's brilliant debut Charm & Strange, Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself. He’s part Win, the lonely teenager...
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When you’ve been kept caged in the dark, it’s impossible to see the forest for the trees. It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . . In Stephanie Kuehn's brilliant debut Charm & Strange, Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself. He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable. Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present. Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths—that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781250021946 (1250021944)
Publish date: June 11th 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages no: 216
Edition language: English
I have serious mixed feelings, guys. Charm & Strange is a little charming and a lot strange. The story takes place on two different timelines. In the present-day timeline, Andrew “Win” Winters wanders into the woods near his remote boarding school. It’s obvious that he has a severe mental illness:...
TW: Abuse, Suicide. It's not graphically detailed. It's wrapped in mystery the whole way through as Win/Drew tries to cope and live. As a survivor, that reveal wasn't completely surprising. I was worried about it for last half of the book at least as a possibility. But what happened with his family...
I picked up Charm and Strange for two reasons. One was that "Delicate Monsters" by the same author had recently been recommended to me and because I had already loved "Complicity" which had put Stephanie Kuehn firmly on my reading radar in the first place.Now I've finished this I'm honestly not sure...
I can't. I just can't right now. I can't anything.