Rating: 
Summary: Who's Crazy?
Review: Girl Interrupted tells the cautionary story of a troubled teenager surviving in a 60's mental institution to which she was warehoused like many other affluent disaffected kids of her generation. Trapped by parental expectations, she descended into depression, attempted suicide, and was coerced to "voluntarily" commit herself after being thrown onto a taxi by an uncaring psychiatrist after a 30 minute interview. What follows is a poignant account of the struggle to maintain sanity amid the cold, uncaring insanity-provoking world of the institution. Crisp, brief chapters are vignette windows into a screened, locked, regimented life. Characters are drawn with skill to help convey the many colored canvas of mental illness. A crazy trip to an ice cream parlor provides a note of humor, whereas the story of the effort to save a fellow patient from a trip back to her disfunctional family illustrates the horror of patient powerlessness. One cannot help but be reminded of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as life imitates art in this true account. Other chapters deal with the vague concepts of sanity and insanity. I was particularly struck by the author's description of the road to craziness as a battle between competing ideas of reality, where the real world is always still visible even from the depths of the imaginary one. Also interesting was the author's partial refutation of her diagnosis. I say partial, because self-mutilation is not a hobby of the sane, regardless of any lengths one might take to explain it. Two criticisms of the book come to mind. First, a personal journal was mentioned in the movie. If it really existed, excerpts from it would have provided a fascinating glimpse of the author's life and thought processes while institutionalized. Second, several things should have been wrapped up at the end. What were the fates of the other girls like Cynthia and Polly? Did the author resume her relationship with her parents, or are they estranged? What became of the staff of the institution, especially the ones who controlled so much of the author's life? Maybe an epilogue chapter would have helped to tie up all these loose ends.
Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Depiction of Madness
Review: I had first seen the movie and had gained intrest in reading the memoir after reading The Bell Jar. While The Bell Jar was excellent, this left me not satisfied enough.
The book to me is a quick read (it's under 200 pgs.) and I sped through it rather quickly. While I will admit that this is one of the best descriptions of a former mental insitution pacient, Kaysen created incredible short chapters and it's too scattered (the film adaption puts all the events in cronological order).
Also, I also didn't like how Kaysen blabs in the last two chapters. To me, the conclusion felt too much like "filler" words it was like taking in too much of a good thing. It is best of she just kept it a chapter short, I would've been able to handle it better.
Rating:
Summary: Stimulating real life novel
Review: This story was powerful with such devoted characters it gave you a real sense of what it is like in a mental institute. the people you meet all the sickness and pain that each character endures a very powerful novel it is much better than the movie
Rating:
Summary: Complex and real.
Review: One young lady explains her journey with Borderline Personality Disorder and how the girls she met in a mental hospital impacted her life and recovery. If anything, I wish the story would have had more details about the girls. Yes, the movie is exciting, but the book is more realistic. Ms. Kaysen brings awesome mind-twisting theories to life and mental health. I suggest this book is a good one for short reading and deep thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Ok I have read the previous reviews and I thought I would but my two cents in. This book should be read by every young girl. I should have read this book in high school. Being a physics major in college I had to love the references in the opening chapter and the tittle Topology of an Unknown Universe. I was a very smart, intelligent, high strung, low self esteem, and artistic young girl who never saw mental illness comming. I am a boarderline personality. It is one of the most misunderstood medical conditions ever. Every high school student is taught about the dangers of drug use, eating disorders, and the like, but no one teaches you how to deal with your own mental limits and in pushing them pushing your own bounds of reality. Reading this book was like staring in my soul.
Rating:
Summary: A poetic rendering of a bygone era of psychiatric therapy
Review: Susanna Kaysen dealt with mental and psychic pain in a fairly common way: an attempted suicide. The year was 1967, the infancy of psychotropic drugs, when psychotherapy was in its hey-day. Girl Interrupted is Kaysen's memoir of two years spent in an expensive and exclusive psychiatric unit, previous guests having been Sylvia Plath, James Taylor, and Ray Charles, among others.
The wit, wisdom, wackiness, and lyricism of 'a madhouse' come through clearly in the author's writing, and she offers vivid and insightful accounts of daily life, her fellow 'guests,' and the link between art and madness which often manifests itself in manic depression, or as we have lately been taught to say, Bipolar Disorder.
A good read, and a pretty good movie...
Rating:
Summary: Too Complex
Review: Seeing as how I'm reviewing books for high schoolers I doubt they could comprehend the deeper feelings that are in this book. A really good book, but may be too complex for average high school students. Having seen the movie before I read the book, made it a little easier to understand. There are a lot of difficult words. Also the book goes back and forth through time. It doesn't flow from point A to point B, it goes from A, to D to B back to A and so on.
Rating:
Summary: Girl Interrupted Book Review
Review: For Susanna Kasen, her life was too interrupted. Reading Girl Interrupted, you get to read Susanna's thoughts and feelings while going on a trip with her mind. Reality and perception is what this 18-year-old battles against. Finding it easy to focus on the book, just like Susanna, you are faced with concepts about life. You may find it difficult to be content with your own thoughts. Reading this book might make you unhappy with your own thoughts as this kind of poetic form of writing traps you in her mind. You become engaged and vulnerable to the ideas of life and it's reality. You might find yourself questioning, or often wondering, trying to analyze and observe what you can not comprehend. You at least try to understand her thoughts. At first, Susanna doesn't express herself and she is in denial about her problem. She didn't think that she had a borderline personality, she just thought that it was the world with the problem. Slowly, but surly, she pieces together her life in a psychiatric hospital.
If you are looking to read a book that grabs your thought and pulls you into a different dimension, and is full of different perceptions, then this is the book for you. Susanna Kasen's insanity will give you an idea about what it's like for her and others like her.
Rating:
Summary: Good read, but ultimately lacking something...
Review: I read this book with high hopes. Ultimately, I wasn't disappointed. "Girl, Interrupted" is the true story of writer Susanna Kaysen's teenage years. After attempting suicide, she is forced to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital. She is diagnosed as "borderline personality disorder." This "disorder" is one that affects almost every woman in the country, no matter how sane they are. The novel also introduces us to the women who share Susanna's life. Some will get to see the outside world again, some won't. The reason I gave this novel only 4 stars is because I felt that it lacked something. Usually, I can read a book over and over again. For Girl, Interrupted, I'd have to be REALLY bored. Maybe it's that Kaysen didn't give us enough to emotionally identify with the characters. Still, Kaysen is a brave woman and I respect her story.
Rating:
Summary: Short and sweet!
Review: I think the title of this review says it all, short and sweet! I read this book in about two hours and LOVED it. I bought this book wanting to see how far off the movie was. I was surprised at the differences between the two. I recommend this book to anyone who watched the movie and wondered what Susanna was writing in her journal, how well the characters were portrayed, and just who made it out "by the 70's".
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