Papercut Press

276 pages, $15

Review by Spencer Goyette

Gina Tron, regular VICE columnist and no stranger to the darker sides of human behavior, has a voice that deserves listening to. In You’re Fine, her autobiography and first book, Tron leads readers on a twisted path through her own personal history detailing events both humorous and dark with a consistent candidness that is excruciatingly honest and magnetic. Tron’s insight into the world around her is often cut with sarcasm and humor, but it carries a depth as she tries to give meaning to the chaos:

“Sometimes people don’t want to understand how a person has become the way they are, they just demonize their current behavior.”

Tron seeks help from a psychiatric facility after being rejected by friends and family following heavy cocaine use and a brutal rape, yet she quickly finds out that the ward she’s entered into has an atmosphere of extreme apathy and neglect. Patients roll around in various states of drugged-up stupor, some shitting themselves so frequently that they are caked in their own excrement. The staff is brutal and negligent, the doctors are cold and mostly absent. Her personal narrative provides insight into how poor the approach to mental health, addiction, and sexual abuse treatment are in this country. Most of us are not aware of these people or fail to acknowledge their existence altogether, as if ignoring fixes the problem. Continue reading →