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Monday, June 6, 2011

Girl Interrupted Review


Title: Girl Interrupted

Author: Susanna Kaysen

Pages: 192

Genre: Autobiography

Publish Date: April 19, 1994


Summary from Goodreads:

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 document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.


My review:

I saw the movie that this book was adapted into before I read the book, both were great. She goes into detail about her thoughts as well as her experiences with the other patients at the institution that she stayed at. Even though it’s an autobiography it’s still pretty interesting because of how it’s written. The story is interesting enough that it could be fictional, but since it’s true, and it really is written from the perspective of someone who actually went through everything that she did, it’s pretty cool. I especially like when she talks about her views on the world and her part in it. Her opinions and outlooks on life really make you think from a different perspective.

I would definitely recommend this book.


Rating:

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