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Girl, Interrupted
 
 
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Girl, Interrupted [Paperback]

Susanna Kaysen (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (448 customer reviews)

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Book Description

April 19, 1994
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital.  She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.

Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant.

From Publishers Weekly

Kaysen's startling account of her two-year stay at a Boston psychiatric hospital 25 years ago was an eight-week PW bestseller.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (April 19, 1994)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679746048
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679746041
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (448 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
89 of 93 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This slim memoir of a college student who suffers a "breakdown" honestly explores the details of mental illness, specifically "borderline personality" disorders. The account starts in a cold, almost frightening way: the first page is a copy of author Kaysen's case record folder. The reader then is given a fleeting description of the quiet moments leading up to Kaysen's lengthy hospitalization, and then is shown more official documents. This juxtaposition of the clinical with the personal highlights exactly what this memoir aims to express, that the darkness of mental disease has a face, a voice, that can be hidden by labels and diagnoses.

Kaysen's difficult and often terrifying journey - from the ordinary daughter of two achieving parents to a patient at a psychiatric hospital to, tentatively, a recovered young woman - is at once moving and beautiful. Even when the author asks questions that many before her have asked, she makes them seem fresh: "What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?" She explores her illness at its most intimate moments and often follows her breaks with reality with detached physician reports, giving the reader both inside and outside perspectives. Through her interactions with other patients, Kaysen makes it clear that not everyone is as fortunate as she, since some cannot extricate themselves from their illness. Interestingly, despite once not believing that she really had bones inside her, Kaysen is not convinced she was mentally ill; if nothing else, this questions the internal changes we've been taught to accept as part of the onset of mental illness.

This book should not be read by anyone believing she is slipping toward insanity, but it might be a comfort to those who have already emerged. Kaysen is at once ordinary and gifted despite this turbulent part of her life. More importantly, this book should be read by the loved ones of those in distress, for it gives a human dimension to what is often ostracized. Understanding the thought processes of at least one stricken young women goes a long way to having compassion for and understanding others.
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58 of 60 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
After reading a few of the comments, which appalled me, I feel the need to comment myself. I have read the book, listened to the tape, and now seen the movie. It is NOT trying to belittle or give an actual diagnosis. This book is to free oneself (a.k.a. Kaysen) from that inner questioning. The way in which the book is written is as if it was a self journey. She did not say that BPD was not a valid disorder. However, she did imply she was not sure how she was diagnosed with the label. If you are looking for a witty piece of literature to read this is for you. It is about the trials and tribulations of one mind that is written almost poetically. However, if you are trying to find a book that can help you to understand or cope with someone who was diagnosed "BPD" this is not the book for you. I was upset by how arrogant some readers were with their comments. It is to be hoped that most of you know the difference between self help and self expression.
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Deceptively simple August 21, 2000
Format:Paperback
I saw the movie version of "Girl Interrupted" when it came out last winter in spite of the mostly negative reviews it received. I loved it, mainly because it highlighted how women can support each other through the toughest of circumstances. I then bought and read the book. The differences between the two are startling: the setting and most of the characters are the same, but the tone is quite different.

The book is mesmerizing from its first paragraph. Susanna Kaysen uses deceptively simple language to describe her experiences and the people she knew during her 18 months stay at McLean's mental hospital. We slowly come to understand the lack of humanity showed to these girls, and the confused world they came from. Ms Kaysen's spare, poetic prose is interspersed with copies of actual hospital records written at the time she was a patient. The records appear as confused as the patients they detail. They seem to detail Susanna's social interactions and levels of ease with others, as if this alone depicts signs of strong mental health. Some of them appear incomplete and neglected. One is left to wonder what exactly the professionals at this hospital were looking for: mental health or acceptable female behavior?

The book is brief, and leaves the reader with more questions than answers. How have we changed in the way we view certain types of female behavior? How have we changed in the way we view those suffering from mental illnesses? Do patients need to be cured or does the world need to be cured?

This is a remarkable book. It manages to raise awareness without giving in to self-pity. I would recommend it to anyone.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A bit too eccentric ... and, in the end, boring
MY EXPECTATIONS - I was very much looking forward to reading this book, after watching, and loving the movie (it is one of my favorite movies). Read more
Published 20 days ago by The Lilodian
Girl, Interrupted
This was a very interesting book which led me to look at things in a different light. It takes place in a time period where America was in a time of change and uncertainty. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Dawg3412
not so much
i revisited this book four times, and each time something was missing. it was like the author was looking inward on her experiences, but without feeling or true reflection, as if... Read more
Published 3 months ago by mechant loup
Get's you thinking.
I don't recommend reading if you have an unstable mind, it definitely gets you thinking about everything.Really good, and it's strongly comparable to the movie. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Erika
A page turner, and a great look into life in the psych ward in the...
I found myself falling in love with the characters in the short book. I could not put it down and finished very quickly. Read more
Published 4 months ago by avid reader
5 stars for the book, 3 stars for the condition it came in...
In this provocative true story, Kaysen tells of her experience as an eighteen-year-old patient in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Alice
Short and bittersweet. True anecdotes about life inside a mental...
"...Kaysen initially was admitted to McLean for treatment of depression, but ended up being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and some of the files that have been... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Colleen @ Here Be Bookwyrms
A Moving Memoir From the Inside Looking Out
I recently read the book, after having loved the movie a decade ago. I was delighted to find that the movie had been pretty much true to the book, based on how I remembered it at... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Kami M. Fancher
Amazing
This book is pretty amazing. The movie is completely different though. Anyway, It's a pretty strong story and for some reason It has a meaning. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Brittany
Enjoyable-eye opener.
I enjoyed this book and read it quickly. It is nice to be able to 'experience' the life of a character through writing and to be introduced to a world we are curious about but... Read more
Published 7 months ago by katmos
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
People ask, How did you get in there? Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
fifty aspirin, seclusion room, nursing station, first interpreter, security screen, head nurse
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Lisa Cody, New York, Borderline Personality Disorder, Administration Building, Hall Meeting, Mill Street, Alice Calais-Callous, Down the Road, Harvard Square, The Prelude
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