The Sky Is Falling: A dark but vivid glimpse into a life of Dissociation, Self-Injury, and Incest through the mind of an adolescent. Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm not sure why I even finished this book. For starters, the glaring grammatical errors left me wondering if the author had completed even a high school level English class, and I'm shocked it was even published without additional editing. The author seems to have particular difficulty conjugating the verb "to see." For example, "Cassidy seen [sic] that the cover of the letter read: 'To Anna, from J." Where this an isolated incident, I would attribute it to an overlooked typo. However, the author consistently uses the past participle instead of the preterite form of this verb. While I found this error the most frustrating, the book was also littered with misplaced commas and awkward phrasing that made it difficult and somewhat painful to read.

The story, at least, was interesting, although at times it became too bizarre to believe. However, I found certain aspects of Cassidy's development infuriating. In particular, I found her move from self-injurious to antisocial behaviors quite troubling. For the vast majority of self-injurers, torturing animals does NOT provide the same relief as self-injury does. In fact, I've never heard even a single piece of anecdotal evidence, let alone actual research to support this view of self-injury. This portrayal only serves to perpetuate the unjustified fear of self-injurers as being prone to inflict violence on others. As a former self-injurer myself, I found this aspect of the story appalling.

Then there's the "information" at the end of the book. I noticed the author sited no references for this section. I think she should have done some research before trying to write on these subjects. I'm not sure where she got her information about the "average self-harmer," but her claims about the socioeconomic background and intellectual ability of self-harmers don't seem to be supported by any scientific research I could find. And her claim that "it's usually associated with Dissociative Disorders" is simply ridiculous. Some of the most common factors that are thought to contribute to self-injury are depression and low self-esteem. While self-injury is more common among people with dissociative disorders than in the general population, the majority of self-injurers don't have a dissociative disorder.

The section on dissociative disorders was almost unreadable. I didn't notice any factual errors in this section, but I was also unable to find a single complete sentence.

I'm not sure why the section titled "Words to Know" was even there. None of the terms listed had anything to do with the book, and none of the definitions were at all informative. I'm also not entirely clear on why "sociopath" was described as "offensive" but "psychopath" was not.

Even the list of resources for self-injurers was ridiculous. There are a lot of excellent books about self-injury. The DSM is not one of them. I don't see how books intended to aid medical professionals in diagnosing psychiatric disorders will be of much help to people struggling with self-injury.

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Product Description:
What happens when you mix a very traumatic childhood with a very fed up teen looking for a way to cope? You can create a psychopath. Cassidy was like every other normal teenager, except for a few major things. She was neglected by her mother, ill-treated by her father, alienated by her peers, and had a rather gruesome way of dealing with displacement issues. Cassidy's only friends were in her ant farm until she is befriended by a young, eccentric, witty Anna. And a handsome, confident, knowledgeable Jonathan; who initially set out to help her and support her. Cassidy's trust issues starts to interfere with her friendship, and suddenly her routine way of coping with pain begins to manifest into something much more disturbing and horrid. Follow Cassidy through her bizarre tunnel of illusions and nightmares, to a place not many people are familiar with . . . The dissociative mind.

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