Girl, interrupted
Description
Similar Titles From NoveList
Similar Authors From NoveList
Subjects
Biographies
Biography & Autobiography
Commitment and detention
Kaysen, Susanna
Kaysen, Susanna, -- 1948
Kaysen, Susanna, -- 1948- -- Mental health
Large type books
Mental health
Mental illness
Mental illness -- Biography
Mentally ill
Mentally ill, Writings of the
Mentally ill -- Commitment and detention -- Massachusetts
Mentally ill women
Mentally ill women -- Personal narratives
Nonfiction
Personal narratives
Psychiatric hospital patients
Psychiatric hospital patients -- Massachusetts -- Biography
Psychology
Rehabilitation
Sociology
Teenagers
Teenagers -- Mental health -- Biography
Teenagers with mental disabilities
Teenagers with mental disabilities -- Rehabilitation -- Personal narratives
More Details
9780679746041
9780786225958
9780804151115
9780786225972
9780679423669
9781439558072
Level 5.4, 5 Points
Published Reviews
Booklist Review
"I went out to dinner with my English teacher, and he kissed me, and I went back to Cambridge and failed biology, though I did graduate, and eventually I went crazy." Susanna Kaysen's voice isn't easy to forget; neither is the unsettling story of the "parallel universe" in which she lived for two years. Diagnosed in 1967 with a personality disorder, Kaysen, then 18 years old, admitted herself to a renowned Massachusetts psychiatric hospital, a "loony bin." Weaving in documents from her medical files, she summons up memories of those years, fusing them into a compelling pastiche, at once furious and surprisingly funny, that captures details of the time, the place, the people, and the events that were part of her disorderly, "interrupted" life. With wisdom born of hindsight, she beckons us swiftly and surely into that curious place, part safe haven, part house of horrors, and through words that inspire laughter and compassion as well as fear, she disturbs our complacency. ~--Stephanie Zvirin
Publisher's Weekly Review
In these brief, direct essays, the author takes a sharp-eyed look back at her nearly two-year stay in a Boston psychiatric hospital 25 years ago. In April 1967, after a 20-minute interview with a psychiatrist she had never seen before, Kaysen, then 18 years old, was admitted to McLean Hospital, diagnosed as a borderline personality. In this series of tightly focused glimpses into this institutionalized world, she writes with a disarming and highly credible suspension of judgment about herself, other patients, the staff and the rules--overt and unspoken--that governed their interactions. Kaysen is an insightful witness, who was able even then to point out to her psychotherapist that his automobiles (a station wagon, a sedan and a sports car) were apt metaphors for his psyche: ego, superego and id. She offers a convincing and provocative taxonomy of experienced insanity--one type characterized by a sped-up, widely inclusive hyper-awareness and another by sluggish response and a sense of time drastically slowed. Supplying reproductions of documents accompanying her stay at McLean, Kaysen ( Asa, As I Knew Him ) draws few conclusions but makes an eloquent case for a broader view of ``normal'' behavior. Author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Kaysen's tell-all memoir received an immense amount of media attention and critical praise. The book became a best seller and has recently been made into a movie. In 1967, after taking 50 aspirins to abort the parts of her that she didn't like, the author for the first time visited a psychiatrist, who immediately called a taxi and hospitalized her. The money that her parents had intended to spend on her college education instead went into paying for a two-year stay at McClean Hospital. Poets Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, singers James, Kate, and Livingston Taylor, as well as Ray Charles are among the hospital's renowned clientele or, as they call themselves, "graduates." Kaysen offers good insights on the connections among poetry, music, and madness as well as a vivid account of institution life. She is at her best when gossiping, describing her surroundings, and offering one-liners on her stay at McClean. Unfortunately, her reading is flat and ultimately difficult to listen to. Not a necessary purchase except where demand dictates.DPam Kingsbury, Florence, AL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Book Review
When Kaysen was 18, in 1967, she was admitted to McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston, where she would spend the next 18 months. Now, 25 years and two novels (Far Afield, 1990; Asa, As I Knew Him, 1987) later, she has come to terms with the experience- -as detailed in this searing account. First there was the suicide attempt, a halfhearted one because Kaysen made a phone call before popping the 50 aspirin, leaving enough time to pump out her stomach. The next year it was McLean, which she entered after one session with a bullying doctor, a total stranger. Still, she signed herself in: ``Reality was getting too dense...all my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.'' In the series of snapshots that follows, Kaysen writes as lucidly about the dark jumble inside her head as she does about the hospital routines, the staff, the patients. Her stay didn't coincide with those of various celebrities (Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell), but we are not likely to forget Susan, ``thin and yellow,'' who wrapped everything in sight in toilet paper, or Daisy, whose passions were laxatives and chicken. The staff is equally memorable: ``Our keepers. As for finders--well, we had to be our own finders.'' There was no way the therapists--those dispensers of dope (Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Librium, Valium)--might improve the patients' conditions: Recovery was in the lap of the gods (``I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why''). When, all these years later, Kaysen reads her diagnosis (``Borderline Personality''), it means nothing when set alongside her descriptions of the ``parallel universe'' of the insane. It's an easy universe to enter, she assures us. We believe her. Every word counts in this brave, funny, moving reconstruction. For Kaysen, writing well has been the best revenge.