But Inside I'm Screaming [Paperback]

Elizabeth Flock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

But inside I'm screaming is one woman's unforgettable story about what it is to lose control as the world watches, to figure out what went so very wrong and to accept an imperfect life in a world that demands perfection.

While breaking the hottest news story of the year, broadcast journalist Isabel Murphy falls apart on live television in front of an audience of millions. She lands at Three Breezes, a four-star psychiatric hospital nicknamed the "nut hut," where she begins the painful process of recovering the life everyone thought she had.

But accepting her place among her fellow patients proves difficult. Isabel struggles to reconcile the fact that she is, indeed, one of them, and faces the reality that in order to mend her painfully fractured life she must rely solely on herself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A riveting, fast-paced tale by a first-time novelist with a gift for breathing life into her characters." -- Judy Woodruff, anchor, CNN's Inside Politics

"An absorbing novel . . . this former reporter writes a story that's hard to put down." -- Oakland Tribune

"An insightful, touching, and, yes, even funny account of what it's like to lose control as the world watches." -- New York Times bestselling author Mary Jane Clark

About the Author

As a correspondent for CBS News she traveled the world to feed her hunger for the big story of the day. The handover of Hong Kong from British rule back to the Chinese, the historic meeting between Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, and London’s reaction to the death and funeral of Princess Diana -- Flock covered them all. In between there were plane crashes, race riots, floods and famine. Few knew that while she was jetting from one breaking news story to another she was battling clinical depression.

Network correspondents will be the first to tell of the personal sacrifice that’s made to follow the story, to beat the competition. Marriages crumble, children grow estranged, friendships wither. Few, though, talk about the inward struggle to stay sane in the middle of chaos. But Inside I'm Screaming takes the reader into a fictionalized fight for sanity.

Soon after returning from living abroad in London, Elizabeth Flock landed in San Francisco reporting for both Time and People magazines. While she was at Time her work included several cover stories, one investigating Chinese gang activity, another on the current movement toward the preservation of marriage, a third on the fiery siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. For People Flock covered many Bay Area stories, among them the Ellie Nesler story of a mother who shot and killed the man suspected of molesting her son. After five years of print reporting, Flock was drawn to television. Soon she was anchoring and reporting at a 24-hour cable network based in San Francisco and writing for the NBC affiliate news station.

But New York beckoned and, after a freelance stint covering the crash of TWA Flight 800 for CBS, she was hired, handed a beeper and cell phone and began working on the ulcer that would ultimately slow her down and change her life.

By 1998 Flock knew she could no longer make the sacrifice required of a rising network star and instead chose the peaceful life of writing. But Inside I'm Screaming is her first novel.

A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Elizabeth Flock is married, has two stepdaughters, four cats and a dog and lives in Chicago. She is currently working on her second novel.

Copyright © 2003 Elizabeth Flock --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: Mira (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0778322106
• ISBN-13: 978-0778322108
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #821,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The single best career decision I ever made was chosing to leave something safe to try something risky. I look back now and smile at how blissfully unaware I was of all that is involved with getting something published but I am grateful I didn't have that as my goal.
All I wanted was to see if I could write a book I had in mind. My wish for everyone would be to experience the joy of completing something they feel so passionate about.
Being a writer is the hardest job I have ever had but it is also the best, most gratifying job I could hope for.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, insightful and flooring, November 3, 2003

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: But Inside I'm Screaming (Paperback)

But Inside I'm Screaming enthralled me from beginning to end. I literally dropped everything to read this from cover to cover.

News anchorman Isabel Murphy has a nervous breakdown in front of millions of viewers. She arrives at Three Breezes -- a.k.a. the "nut hut" -- with the hope to regain some normalcy in her life. When her past begins to unravel, she wonders if she's ever lived a normal life.

This novel reminds me of Girl, Interrupted. There are various similarities between the two books, but this novel touched me in a profound way. The characters are vivid, the dialogue is crisp and the story is as intense as it is insightful. Isabel's battle with depression floored me. Her realistic, unflinching honesty touched me. Book club members would devour this! I am buying a copy to all my friends. I urge you to give this wonderful literary offering a whirl.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new, fresh, or even thought-provoking, June 14, 2007

By 

Christina Ravens Bridges - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: But Inside I'm Screaming (Paperback)

This book owes a large debt to Girl, Interrupted, a medium debt to The Bell Jar, and even a small debt to the Lifetime movies at which the main protagonist, Isabel, sneers.

None of the characters are more than two-dimensional, even Isabel. We're given flashes of her unhappy childhood with daddy issues, her unhappy adult relationships, her unhappy professional life...okay, we get she's depressed. But it all feels like a thin veneer to excuse the "shocking" (not) look inside mental institutions. The author would rather throw a few extra stereotypical patients in than explore any of the very real and very deep emotions and thought processes suicide attempters go through. Oh, here's a babykiller! Oh, here's a Daddy's Girl! But don't come any closer, they're CRAAAAAAZY. Sigh. The plot is so very thin that nearly every paragraph is a chapter break, apparently in order to stretch it from novella length to novel. So much space could have used so much more constructively!

At the very least, the author seems to attempt some sort of empathy in the end for the patients, and bring it back to how we're all snuggly humans who just need love, which I guess is better than openly mocking them and their supposedly-Lifetime-ready foibles...so the second star is for attitude. But I'm still not going to bother passing it around any book clubs.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Trite Candy For the Mind, September 17, 2005

By 

Tobey A. James (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: But Inside I'm Screaming (Paperback)

In her debut novel, But Inside I'm Screaming, author Elizabeth Flock follows the challenging events Isabel Murphy, a young news reporter, has after freezing on air while reporting on Princess Diana's fatal auto accident, attempting suicide and ultimately ending up in a psychiatric hospital. An endorsement from author Mary Jane Clark appears on the paperback edition of Flock's novel in which Clark describes the novel as "insightful." Flock's depiction of Isabel's experience with mental illness and her stay at a private and exclusive psychiatric facility are far from insightful.
What Flock offers is a three hundred page novel that reads like light, beach literature, that is trite candy for the mind and offers no insight into the human condition. In the end, Flock's novel reads like a fable and concludes with the moral: if one loves oneself, then all else in one's life will be positive. The main character even has the opportunity to share this moral lesson with a young child who is in the pediatric portion of the hospital. Isabel not only is allowed to approach this child who does not know her, but she goes on to impart her life's lesson using language that a child of the age the author depicts would not understand, or be able to apply to his own life.
Another unfortunate outcome upon concluding But Inside I'm Screaming is the feeling of emptiness the reader acquires when realizing that the character Isabel is vapid and no other characters were developed. Flock does not invest author or reader time in developing the supporting characters of the novel which would serve to embellish the story and provide a more appropriate backdrop to Isabel's saga. Characters the reader is to believe are of import to Isabel include her parents, the small group of patients that are in the hospital while she is there, her spouse and close colleagues.
Minimally, without developing the cadre of characters that are involved in her daily life at the hospital (which is the setting for the majority of the book) the reader is left wondering how Isabel's condition is improving given she has no opportunity for dialogue with others. Furthermore, by Flock's own pen, Isabel is becoming a role model for the mentally ill clients her therapist sees. But Inside I'm Screaming is not a realistic portrayal of the ravaging effects that mental illness can have on an Isabel, particularly a character that requires hospitalization. This reviewer is astonished that Flock is a seasoned reporter (who evidently left behind not only her career as a reporter but her ability to conduct thorough and reliable research as well) and writer who readily earned publication of a second novel, with a third on the way.