How to Make Friends with the Dark

Literary fiction

Print length: 448 pagesEmber, 2020

Description

Teenager Tiger’s world has always centered on her mother, so her mother’s sudden death leaves her without both a parent and a clear place to belong. With no known extended family available, Tiger enters foster care and moves through unfamiliar homes while grief darkens her sense of herself and the future. The possibility that she has a sister offers hope, but it also forces her to reconsider what kinship means when family can no longer be defined by the life she lost. The novel stays close to Tiger’s anger, loneliness, and fragile attempts at connection, portraying mourning not as a problem to solve but as a darkness she must learn to live beside.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Fragmentary · Lyrical

Pace

Measured

Tone

Dark · Hopeful · Intimate · Melancholic

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Relationships · Voice

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingFamilyGriefIdentityIsolationTransformation

About Kathleen Glasgow

Kathleen Glasgow writes young adult fiction about teenagers living through grief, addiction, self-harm, and unstable forms of home. A poet before she became a novelist, she brings spare, lyrical compression to scenes of crisis, often using fragmentary passages and direct, conversational language to keep the narrative close to a young person’s shifting perceptions. Her plots do not treat recovery as a clean reversal. They follow its routines, setbacks, negotiations, and dependence on other people, while giving equal attention to shame and practical survival. Girl in Pieces traces Charlie’s attempt to rebuild a life after self-harm and devastating losses. How to Make Friends with the Dark moves through foster care with Tiger after her mother’s death, widening private mourning into questions of kinship and belonging. In You’d Be Home Now, a sibling’s opioid addiction becomes both a family emergency and a public story imposed by a small town. Glasgow repeatedly examines the gap between those fixed labels and the complicated inner lives they conceal.

Books by Kathleen Glasgow

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Ember
Language: English
ISBN: 9781101934784

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