Suicide, Mental Health, Psychology & Counseling, Teenagers, General, Psychology 

In this book, author and psychiatrist Millie Osborne publishes the years-long diary of Electra, a former patient who committed suicide in March 2002. It follows Electra through her struggles with her mother’s death, childhood sexual abuse, money management, and guilt. In addition to the diary, the book contains annotations by Osborne which provide context for the events described in the diary and speculation about Electra’s mental and emotional states.

Electra’s diary itself is interesting and worth reading. However, while Osborne’s annotations do provide necessary background information and some useful insights, they are also kind of creepy. She seems almost to fetishize her subject and her illness when she describes Electra’s appearance on more than one occasion with passages such as “she blossomed into a taller-than-average adolescent, slender, well figured, and always catching the males’ stares when she entered a room” (3). Her tone throughout the book is also very judgmental of Electra; at one point, Osborne compares her to a two-year-old running into traffic (52). In her final analysis, Osborne concludes that “Happiness is planted in the first ten years of life by parents that project the earthly image of a loving God onto their children. Happiness is God” (153). The reader of this book would best treat Osborne’s writing with some skepticism.