Customer Reviews

Girl Interrupted

5 star:		(212)
4 star:		(121)
3 star:		(54)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

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.

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.

I am only thirteen years old, and I read this book and related to it completely! I know what it's like to feel like you're all alone in this world much like Susanna Kaysen did. I have an anxiety disorder, but it is not nearly as serious as any of the mental illnesses in this book! However, the basic idea that people who are viewed as "crazy" may just be as normal as the next person you see going to work or running to catch the bus. It's great that somebody has pointed that out. When I was first diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, I too felt that I was crazy and that no one would understand what I was going through. Although, I never got to the point where I wanted to commit suicide. The book was not only dramatic, it was kind of funny in a dark way. One page I was laughing at for about a half hour. SPOILER: The part where Lisa came into Daisy's room with chicken and laxatives, that cracked me up! I recommend this book to anybody who's every felt they were "crazy".

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.

Susanna Kaysen checked herself into McLean Psychiatric Hospital when she was 18, in 1967. This book is about how her life was interrupted, the two years she spent at the hospital, the other girls on the ward, her keepers, and her psychiatrists. It shows you how someone with a "borderline personality" thinks, and how they act, without going into a lot of technical detail, just her own experiences. This book reminds me of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, because of it's inside look of a teenager. The style of writing is also similar, yet it's not the same. The descriptive detail in both books is there throughout, but never excessive or boring. It keeps you reading until the end, and then wanting to know more.

One thing that stood out to me was the character description. It's most prominent in Susanna, the narrator, the main character. She shares her thoughts, whether or not they're important to other people, it's important to her, and she'll go into detail explaining it.

"Take a thought---anything; it doesn't matter. I'm tired of sitting here in front of the nursing station: a perfectly reasonable thought. Here's what velocity does to it. First, break down the sentence: "I'm tired"-well, are you really tired, exactly? Is that like sleepy? You have to check all your body parts for sleepiness, and while you're doing that, there's a bombardment of images of sleepiness, along these lines: head falling onto pillow, head hitting pillow, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Little Nemo rubbing sleep from his eyes, a sea monster. Uh-oh, a sea monster. If you're lucky, you can avoid the sea monster and stick with sleepiness."

This is probably my favorite quote from the book. Her thought process is so random, it's almost funny. But because this is how she thinks, and how she looks at life, it's how she got to where she is now. Another character that stood out to me was Daisy. She "was a seasonal event. She came before Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas every year. Some years she came for her birthday in May as well." What I thought was "quirky" about her was her need for Ex-Lax and chicken.

"Twice a week her squat potato-face father brought a whole chicken roasted by her mother and wrapped in aluminum foil. Daisy would hold the chicken in her lap and fondle it through the foil, darting her eyes around the room, eager for her father to leave so she could get going on the chicken. But Daisy's father wanted to stay as long as possible, because he was in love with Daisy."

All of the girls on the ward were strange, and quirky, but Daisy and Susanna were different. I could actually picture them in my mind without any doubt, and I enjoyed learning new peculiar things about them. I could picture the other characters, but they didn't stick out in my mind even when I learned more information about them.

This book was well written for a large audience. As a teenager, I enjoyed reading it. Some things I could compare my own life with. I would think adults would also enjoy reading it, remembering back when they were a teenager. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under 15, because of some language, and also what it's about. I read it a few years ago, and didn't understand any of it.

This is a breath-taking true life account of the horrors involved with mental institutions. The author transferred the emotions felt by the character into the reader with poise and fluency. There is never a dull moment in the story line. The character is continuously faced with traumas that seem so unreal to most of us. It is a true reality check of the capability of our minds. Definitely recommended, for your enjoyment.

Many of us have doubted our sanity at one point or another, especially during adolescence; after reading this book, you may have cause to doubt it again. Susanna Kaysen's memoir portrays the "parallel universe" of insanity with alarming precision.

Girl, Interrupted is a quick read, but worth reading more than once. Kaysen's prose is sophisticated, straightforward, and honest, with enough figurative language to give the book a poetic feel. The book is divided into short, self-contained chapters, organized in a vaguely (but not perfectly) linear time frame; the purpose of this is not to show a conventional plot, but to provide a loose framework for Kaysen's illness and its prognosis. Its departure from the confines of traditional stories is refreshing: there isn't the typical sense of character development or conflict, but that only reinforces the book's deeper sense of reality. Besides that, the conflict's still going on for Kaysen.

Rather than trying to teach us a lesson, Kaysen intends to raise questions about the boundaries of madness, unclear and perpetually shifting, and about who has the ability to determine these boundaries. She accomplishes this covertly, but she certainly accomplishes it.

I haven't seen the recently released movie, but from what I've seen and heard of it, it doesn't do this book justice. On the other hand, this review doesn't even do the book justice. It's beautifully written, engaging, and surprisingly relevant to our ordinary "sane" lives. I enthusiastically recommend this book and I applaud Kaysen for her literary contribution.

this book is a terrific explanation of what happens inside a mental institution in the late 60's and it is thoughtful of its treatment of what is the definition of insanity. However, I wish the author had revealed a little more about her personal life e.g. why did she try to kill herself and what was her homelife like? If you are going to tell your own story I think you owe the reader all the facts that are necessary to get your point across. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable book.

"Girl, Interrupted": Susanna Kaysen's Book is Superior to James Mangold's Movie

"Girl, Interrupted" is the true story of an 18-year-old woman who swallows 50 aspirin tablets and is hustled by her doctor to a loony bin after a superficial, 20-minute interview. She is told that she needs a rest and that she would be released in a couple of weeks. Instead, after voluntarily signing herself in, she winds up confined to the hospital against her will for eighteen months. The book and the movie focus almost exclusively on her period of internment.

What's missing from this film is the author's dark humor and revelatory insights into her ordeal. The book is better than the movie.

Look at how much insight and enjoyment you could get if you peruse the book!

"You have a pimple," said the doctor. "You've been picking it," he went on. Fine. You could have this dialogue in the movie. There's nothing witty about it: just a statement of fact.

Without narration, however, not much more could be done with this concept. But note how the author shows her sense of humor in the book: "The pimple had reached the stage of hard expectancy in which it begs to be picked. It was yearning for release. Freeing it from its little white dome, pressing until the blood ran, I felt a sense of accomplishment: I'd done all that could be done for this pimple."

Immediately following, there occurs this exchange with the doctor. "You need a rest," he announced. "Don't you think?" "Yes," I said. Not much here either. Nor would you have anything else in the movie version, at least not unless the sound track embraced her immediate thoughts, which point to an irony. The book: "I did need a rest, particularly since I'd gotten up so early that morning in order to see this doctor, who lived out in the suburbs. I'd changed trains twice. And I would have to retrace my steps to get to my job. Just thinking about it made me tired." Doesn't this thought--left out in the movie--clarify her willingness to go to the hospital?

Susanna Kaysen has written a beautifully poignant memoir of her voluntary commitment to a mental institution at the tender age of eighteen. Since her two-year stay began in 1967, her diagnosis and treatment seem a little off by today's standards. What must institutionalization have meant to a young girl from that time? A time when ostracizing people for mental illness was the norm?

Though slender, this memoir is packed with valuable and poignant insights as Kaysen looks back on that part of her life. She mentions, "The brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes its perceptions." And, "Insanity comes in two basic varieties, slow and fast." She goes on to describe these as viscosity and velocity. "Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination."

Kaysen describes the other girls institutionalized with her, sometimes humorously, but also discusses mental illness and how her diagnosis affected her. One of the things that surprised me is that she was recommended to check in for two weeks by a therapist she'd only seen once and wound out being committed for two years, but she never once mentions feeling betrayed by the therapist. Another thought of mine was how normal she seemed by today's standards. People walk around everyday with her symptoms; what used to be aberration is now a norm.

Kaysen's book is a fast read, highly enjoyable, well written, and a very insightful journey through her own illness that will touch the mind of the reader. You'll certainly find yourself sympathizing with this confused young woman, and in the end wishing perhaps you had gotten to know her just a little better. By this, I mean that the book could have been much longer and still have been just as fascinating and touching. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!