Getting sick
David is lonely and often sick as a child. His older brother bullies him. His father, a doctor, is detached and critical. His mother, born with her heart on the wrong side of her chest, is emotionally unavailable and prone to outbursts of anger. Stitches is the story of how David develops his own language, a language he first identifies as “getting sick.” As it turns out, “getting sick,” gets deadly serious when he develops throat cancer in adolescence. His parents never tell him he has cancer. Instead, he’s subjected to mystifying surgeries and silence.
Small’s parents--depicted without eyes--offer little comfort or emotional support. Line breaks – repeated throughout Small’s book as slashing raindrops, telephone poles on lonely highways, and the titular stitches Small received during his throat surgery – reinforce the themes of fracture and breach throughout.