Customer Reviews

Life Inside: A Memoir

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the rare book that sends chills up the spine, tears down your face, and on multiple occasions make you laugh aloud. More importantly, this book made me pause and think deeply about the issues Lewis raises regarding the lines between sanity and insanity, the uses and misuses of various therapies and medications by the psychiatric community, and the long-term implications of a scarred adolescence. The author is not only an excellent writer, she is an incredibly brave person to have written such a book. Blows away Susanna Kaysen's "Girl, Interrrupted" with its vivid portrayal of daily life inside a mental institution and its equally important depiction of what happens once you escape such a place (something Kaysen's book did not cover). Lewis's self-portayal is honest and full, her characters are vividly drawn, and you really get a sense of what drove her mother, her doctors, her attendents, her feloow inmates, and herself to behave the way they did -- creating a difficult situation and then enduring it. I'm giving this book to all my friends -- even those who don't normally read memoirs -- because Lewis' book is so much more than that.

I'm a memoir junkie, and this is one of the most rewarding, carefully written memoirs I have ever read. Lewis insightfully describes each stage of her rich transition from searingly painful adolescence to self-actualized adulthood. I marvel at her narrative's double-voice: she accurately conveys both adolescent self-doubt and emotionally-attuned adult wisdom.
Readers who will particularly appreciate this book include lovers of well-wrought prose, and people who feel impaired by something in their past, and cautiously optimistic about their chances of getting over it and/or growing from it.

This remarkable work describes the harrowing, yet in some ways winsome experience of a remarkable child of the 60s raised in the home of divorced parents and forever rebelling against her 'perfect mother.' At the outset, Mindy is on her way to the institution that is to be her home for 2 1/2 years and most of this memoir is devoted to those times - a life inside with the others inside, those that are patients, those that are employees, and those that are the professionals. Mindy has gone through her medical records of those days and peppered her
historical descriptions with the views of her psychiatrists as outlined in those records. The life inside is intimately and thoroughly described and one feels not only the horror, the bondings, and the feeling of abandonment, but the eventual resignation. Mindy will come to terms with her issues, her parents and herself as described in the life outside that is the book's second portion. She comes to see 'the other side'. The memoir is written with remarkable sensitivity and emotional candor.

I think there is a place in literature for a story like Ms. Lewis tells. I thank goodness that for all the mysteries that surround mental illness still, we have come very far from where we were in the '60s.

Ms. Lewis does not really address the 'why' - why she was hospitalized in the first place. To hear her tell it, she was just a little rambunctious (and so were all her hospitalized peers). I have to believe that it was much worse than she lets on. Even so, I have a bit of a hard time feeling bad for her when she is hospitalized, because as badly as she wanted out, she refused to toe the line and do what it took to be released. She was constantly causing trouble and getting herself restricted, and she wasn't a stupid, innocent girl by any stretch of the imagination, and undoubtedly this obstinate behavior caused her very lengthy stay.

Ms. Lewis critiques her adult behavior with a fine-toothed comb, and speculates how her adult choices are affected by her hospitalization, and by her upbringing.

I really felt for her mother, who had the weight of the world on her single-parent shoulders. Ms. Lewis characterizes her as extremely dysfunctional, and blames most of her problems on her.

Certainly she was not schizophrenic as she was diagnosed in the hospital, but from her many lengthy descriptions, I saw evidence of possible bi-polar disorder. Unfortunately it seems like she never explored an alternative diagnosis that might have been treated successfully.

Mindy Lewis is a brave woman and was even a braver adolescent. Her bravery as a teenager is the powerful foundation of her ability to survive, endure and thrive. I have been touched by her words and in her memoir Life Inside I learned a great deal about this courageous young woman. I am certain that by bearing her soul to me and to everyone who read this book, I was able to feel her strength and power.

Certainly there are many who have either been misdiagnosed or who have been mistreated while being wards of a state or as an inpatient on a psyche ward. But those stories are not always told or known. Mindy's is the voice for all of these souls. Her goals are pure and her intentions honorable by telling her story and showing me and her fans and readers of Life Inside how her strength and endurance and understanding can have a profound impact on so many lives.

Mindy is an alum of SUNY Empire State College where I am a matriculated student, and her kindness has been extended to me when her response to a letter from me has continued to encourage me to complete my own memoir Good Self/Bad Self: The Individuation of My Selves. I hope that my project is soon available on Amazon and elsewhere and I invite readers of Mindy's book to let me share my story with them, as well.

I am confident that Mindy Lewis would not see herself or her work as being heroic but to me and I know to many, her story illustrates her hero-like status and it is my strongest recommendation that her memoir be shared with as many readers as possible.


F. Paul Muccigrosso II
Lancaster, New York

In this insightful and beautifully-written memoir, Mindy Lewis lets us in on her innermost feelings and thoughts while an adolescent inpatient in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960's--and afterward. She candidly recounts her experiences regarding her family, her problems, and what life was like inside a ward at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. A panorama of patients is displayed in a crisp, no-nonsense style, with beautiful imagery and insights delicately woven throughout. The book is extremely well-constructed. Surely anyone under mental or emotional duress will find "Life Inside" enlightening--let alone encouraging and helpful. And for those somewhat more balanced, it offers much drama and insight too. Mindy Lewis opens her heart and mind as rarely shown and this book surely fills a gap in accounts of those who were "there" and back. All in all, this warm and poignant recollection is a testament to Mindy Lewis' unwavering search for meaning, truth and understanding, and her coming to terms; it is a bulwark of hope and perhaps redemption. Read it: you'll be touched for today and many tomorrows.

In this heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking account, Mindy Lewis describes her life journey, framed by her experiences as a teenage patient in a mental ward. Her story is honest and open. As a reader, I could identify with her pain and her experience, even though it is quite different from my own. Many of the feelings she describes are universal, which leads me to question society and its definition of insanity. Throughout her account, Mindy feels "different" and "individualistic", most likely as a result of her creativity and ability to visualize and approach life in a less constrained manner. As someone who does not have a similar life experience, I can still relate to those feelings.

The book is extremely well-written and vivid, with great attention to physical and emotional detail. The story moves quickly (over 30 years in 350 pages), with its main focus how the 27-months in the institution affected Mindy's life. However, the book also details Mindy's journey to understand her life, the world around her, her family, and how to create meaning from experience, going beyond "life inside".

I highly recommend this book.

Life Inside has become one of my favorite books.

The story of Mindy Lewis, an almost typical teenager of the late sixties in a culture that much of society didn't know how to deal with. (Many "normal" teenagers found themselves in psych wards then as they do now.) Experimenting with drugs and boys and throwing much caution to the wind forced her mother to make a difficult decision in sending her to P.I.

The details used to paint a bleak picture of her two and a half years inside were painful and beautiful at the same time. Mindy is joined by a cast of other teenagers like herself, trapped in a world that they can only escape within themselves. She and the other youths are all in the same boat, "Am I sane or insane?"

The memoir doesn't end there on the inside but also life outside. Mindy's self-doubt about her mother and her family and a lot of reflections on what landed her at a psych hospital in the first place. The luncheon that she has with her mother where they finally have an open dialouge about her mother's decision to send her there is heartwenching. We know Mindy's side. Upon hearing her mother's side you really sympathise and wonder what else could she have done?

A loving package of memoir, storytelling, and period piece.

Once I started reading Life Inside, I could not put it down. The vivid, intimate writing transported me completely.

Mindy Lewis' memoir paints a clear picture of everyday life on the fifth-floor ward of the NY State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Life Inside also dramatizes a sensitive teenage girl's coming of age during the turbulent 1960s. The second half of the memoir, "Life After," discusses the particular challenges of adjusting to life outside, after twenty-eight months of hospitalization.

Throughout Life Inside, Mindy Lewis faces painful memories openly and honestly, and I admire her courage. She is a strong, hopeful and determined individual, and her memoir offers much inspiration. It also raises important questions about the nature of human emotions and the dangers of unchecked institutional authority. Ultimately, Life Inside celebrates the healing powers of art, music and literature, of self-reflection and friendship.

This is a fascinating, beautifully written memoir about a grave personal injustice, but it also sheds light on societal attitudes toward non-conformity, and is a window into the sixties and the struggles which were prevalent at that time.