Rating: 
Summary: Jenn Crowell may be young, but she is great!
Review: I just finished reading "Necessary Madness" and found myself in tears! It was so beautiful and I could not put it down at any time. I found it in my favorite bookshop, read the first three lines and had to buy it and I do not regret that. I'm still thinking about it. When I finished reading, I felt like I lost a good friend. Jenn Crowell made the character of Gloria so real that I almost had the feeling I knew her very well. I hope that she will write many more books to please her readers!
Rating: 
Summary: A good read for any age
Review: I liked that book. It was nicely written, such a way that you can believe it takes place in England. I am 15 and I'm sick of those so-called books aimed towards teen audiences and they are no more than an episode of "Saved by the Bell." Finally a teenaged writer comes up with a realistic, simple yet eye catching plot. The was pretty much a 30 yr old widow raising a son but the story was great.
Rating:
Summary: insightful reading
Review: I loved this book! Jenn Crowell seems to put beauty into every single sentence - I don't know how she does it. In the beginning, I did feel as though I were reading a list of SAT words, which betrays the author's age and inexperience. However, throughout the story, I could actually feel Gloria's overwhelming grief, confusion, and helplessness, which is, ultimately, what fiction should do.
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Summary: Puts feelings and thoughts into words...
Review: I stumbled upon the book-on-tape version of this book a few years ago, and found myself having to pull over on the side of the road because I was crying so much. The incredibly young age of the author, in combination with her ability to put these intense feelings into words, makes this an amazing book. I had just lost my mother about a year prior to reading this novel. While losing a mother and losing a husband are not the same, one cannot compare grief. I distinctly remember thinking "oh my god- she's saying what I've been feeling and unable to say". Overall, an excellent, intense book.
Rating: 
Summary: Please.
Review: I think alot of people look at this book and think this is not a good book about grief. But ofcourse it is not I don't believe it is suppose to be, and if you read this book with hopeing that you will learn something about grief from it, then you are reading it for all the wrong reasons. I actually found this book by accident. I was looking up books on leukemia and stumbled on it. I bought it used and say all the great feedback it was getting and also some negative so I decided to give it a try. I think this book is more or less a story of a woman coming to terms with her life, and what it took to get her where she is. I think it also gives alot of young adults a look at what a truly relationship is like, and the pain and agony that you go through when your time is cut short with that person. You know it is different to just end a marriage through divorce because you know that person still exist, but when someones life is cut short then it is quite a bit more difficult.
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Summary: A book about Grief?
Review: I think alot of people look at this book and think this is not a good book about grief. But ofcourse it is not I don't believe it is suppose to be, and if you read this book with hopeing that you will learn something about grief from it, then you are reading it for all the wrong reasons. I actually found this book by accident. I was looking up books on leukemia and stumbled on it. I bought it used and say all the great feedback it was getting and also some negative so I decided to give it a try. I think this book is more or less a story of a woman coming to terms with her life, and what it took to get her where she is. I think it also gives alot of young adults a look at what a truly relationship is like, and the pain and agony that you go through when your time is cut short with that person. You know it is different to just end a marriage through divorce because you know that person still exist, but when someones life is cut short then it is quite a bit more difficult.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Mary Shelley Writer
Review: I was overwhelmed when I first read Jenn Crowell's Necessary Madness at the sense of maturity in a writer so young. I have heard people say that "one has an old soul;" however, until I encountered this book, I had never believed that statement to be true. Crowell's intensity and emotional outpouring is enough to make any man, woman or child understand and FEEL the emotion at the deepest levels possible. I HIGHLY recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: I've read this book five or six times and it still reads like new every time. Jenn Crowell's talent amazes me: she was only seventeen when she wrote the book, she's never been married or had a child or lived in London, and yet all her words read authentically. Crowell is able to get inside Gloria's head and tell us the reader exactly what is going on, sympathetically and artistically. The characters are well-developed, the plot is fascinating, and the stylistic device--chapters in the present alternating with those set in the past--melds the book together seamlessly. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Necessary Questions
Review: In Jenn Crowell's Necessary Madness we get introduced to a mother and son enduring a "spot in time"-a husband and fathers recent death. Reading this story is like looking into a kaleidoscope by which your own life experiences shape the picture that you see with your eyes squinted. I valued the book for the questions it raised about death: Is better for someone to die suddenly or is it better to have time for closure? Why do some people surrender their lives to suicide while others grasp on to the beauty of life even as white blood cells over take them? How can a parent be authentic in grieving when it is as Crowell reminds us such a selfish process? These questions surfaced for me during the reading. It is a heartfelt story that reminds us that as long as there is purpose . . .there is life.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine first novel
Review: Just seventeen when she wrote NECESSARY MADNESS, Jenn Crowell has fashioned a novel wise beyond her years. Her ability to tap into the deep, maddening ache of grief belies her age.
Gloria, while studying abroad in England, falls in love and marries a British painter, Bill, who is gentle and thoughtful and unpretensious. They are happy, gloriously happy: Bill paints and Gloria teaches. They conceive a son and life seems good, too good. Then Bill suffers from a loss of energy and bruises on his arms. Tests reveal cancer. Slowly, he dies. Gloria, bereft and adrift, tries to carry on, but she is unable to contain an unpredictable emotionality.
Since the book opens on the day of the funeral, we learn through flashbacks the history of their relationship as well as the history of Gloria's dysfunctional family -- a cloying father and a resentfully shrill mother, an American and a Brit, like Gloria and Bill.
This is curious territory for the debut novel of a college sophomore, though she handles it admirably, stopping just short of maudlin, mawkish sentiment. Her writing and pace are superb. She has a good sense of how to tell a story but falters in handling characters. Too often they fall short of the complexity and depth we expect (Gloria is the exception). Relationships often seem unsubstantiated, rushed, and one-dimensional. For example, Gloria's deep disaffection for her mother seemed unjustified and puzzled me.
Overall, I found the work engaging and worthwhile; its strengths overshadowed its soft spots.
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