Customer Reviews

But Inside I'm Screaming

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I did enjoy this book, but throughout the book I could not help but to feel like it was all too similar to Girl, Interrupted. The story is well told and the literary style keeps you interested while the story moves quickly; however I feel if you want an original, read Girl, Interrupted.

In NYC, Isabel Murphy is a rising anchorwoman at the American News Network (ANN). However, voices in her head keep telling her that her family feels she is worthless and her catastrophic marriage adds to her lack of confidence and emotional belief that her parents are right when they call her a disappointing failure.

Isabel has a chance to prove otherwise when she is the only newsperson at the station when the death of Diana Princess surfaces. She goes on the air to report the breaking news, but freezes and is unable to say a word as her brain just drums to the beat of failure. Knowing her broadcast career is over and how she has disappointed everyone, Isabel opts for suicide, but fails at that. She enters Three Breezes Psychiatric Facility where she finds the lunatic asylum worse than anything she ever imagined. She will only fly above the cuckoo's nest when she accepts that she can't please everyone so she should try to please herself.

This is an insightful character study that looks extremely close into the psyche of someone whose mental breakdown and depression places her over the edge. The bleak yet at times amusing well written story line focuses on Isabel whose collapse will stun the audience even while we follow her thoughts and actions. Isabel's disintegration with a frightening glimpse of the goings-on at the psychiatric facility is not for everyone, but readers will agree that Elizabeth Flock provides a powerhouse.

Harriet Klausner

Predictable and boring. Nothing exciting. Here I am buidling up for a great read but this wasn't it. All these characters a lot of build up and then nothing. Don't waste your time with this book.

The victim of several abusive relationships, Isabel has struggled for most of her life with low self esteem and severe depression. After a suicide attempt, she checks herself into Three Breezes, a psychiatric facility. She's there for roughly three weeks, and her life is completely turned around. Not because of any treatment (although the author may have been subtly implying that the electroshock treatments that were administered to Isabel against her will were a factor, she only had two. I doubt that would have made a dramatic difference), but because of a comment from her heretofore emotionally distant mother. After a weepy conversation in which she expresses jealousy for Isabel's attachment to her often absent father, Mom advises Isabel that "you have to love yourself". A lightbulb goes on over Isabel's head. Relating this to her therapist in a later session, Isabel states "That's it. I figured it out. It's so simple." Then, in case we didn't get it, the author helpfully adds "The sound of a breakthrough." And that is essentially the entire plot.

There are some interesting supporting characters among the fellow residents of Three Breezes, but we don't learn much about them. They are there mainly for Isabel to look down upon and assure herself that she's nothing like them. "You're not like everybody else, Isabel. You're normal," one of them points out - again, in case we missed it.

Sorry, but I'm in the minority here. I found "But Inside I'm Screaming" to be a very unrealistic portrayal of mental illness, wrapped up too quickly with a way too neat ending. A disappointing read.

Isabel Murphy is a hot anchorwoman, until she has a meltdown on live television as the story of Diana Princess of Wales' death breaks. Unable to cope, Isabel even goes to the extent of attempting suicide, but fails.

She finds herself in a mental hospital, robbed of all semblance of privacy in a world few can imagine. Dignity and reality are only distant dreams on the road to healing. When drug therapy fails, shock is used. Isabel witnesses true horrors, more awful than anything she ever reported. She has to hit absalute bottom before being able to find her way back to life.

***** This is a starkly real novel, one that can be terrifying, not for the reason something like Stephen King would write would be, but because Isabel could be you, or me, or your neighbor so very easily. The only thing separating her from us is a thin line. This is a powerful book that will disturb and shock you at times, but will not fail to move you. *****

Reviewed by Amanda Killgore

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. I was immediately absored by the main character, Isabel. This is a brutally honest portral of hopelessness and depression. Anyone who has struggled with even mild depression will be able to relate to Isabel. This is a must read.

I haven't read Girl, Interrupted, so I can't compare or contrast it to this book. The title is what caught my eye because I certainly have felt that way at one point or another in life. It's an interesting look into what happens when a person just can't go on pretending that everything is "Fine" and "OK". But the character's breakdown is somehow cushioned by being dropped into a 'four star' treatment center with the knowledge that job and bank account won't suffer while she's "away." That aspect of the novel made me wonder how an average jane or john doe would fare given the same circumstances. Certainly I understand that class and income weren't part of what the author was trying to expose, but I wondered how some of the other patients could afford to be in a mental hospital of that caliber.

The breakdown was well-written as were her attempts at returning to work. It was a good read & I also found myself having trouble putting it down until I had read the last page.