Girl, Interrupted

Rating:
Summary: Mental Disturbance or Just Normal Teenage Years
Review: I know I really like a book when I find myself always thinking about it. I was drawn to Girl Interrupted and whatever room I left it in.
From her unique perspective, Susanna Kaysen raises the question; how does society identify the insane. Are those who choose to live outside of accepted behavioral norms insane or do they become more vulnerable because of the resulting social isolation?
If you, or someone you know suffers from a mental illness I highly recommend this book as an insight. 25 years after Susanna had been discharged, she researched her 'diagnosis' from the DSM III. Being told she suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder she began to wonder how many other so called disorders have been removed from this new edition and will her disorder still exist 25 years later? At one time, homosexuality was listed in the DSM as a psychiatriac disorder. You won't find it in there now. Makes you wonder what will be taken out next.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: This book was well written and kept your interest throughout. However, it has been compared to the Bell Jar, which is unfair. This Bell Jar is more about a descent into madness, which this book deals with far less, and is the poorer for it. However, one of the central themes of this book is whether or not the author was in fact as ill as the authorities claim, so perhaps she had to concentrate on the ward and its inhabitants. The characters were depicted well and so were the relationships with various doctors and psychiatrists. This book is worth reading, but read the Bell Jar first.

Rating:
Summary: Girl Interrupted
Review: Many novels that are written have a happy ending. In the book Girl, Interrupted, this is not the case. This memoir, written by Susanna Keysen, is the darkly humorous story of an 18 yr old girl trapped within a mental institution. She introduces characters that come and go in her boxed life and explains their history, along with an analysis of each. While out of order and slightly confusing at certain points, the book quickly straightens out and gives it a more personal feeling and being like thoughts, not a textbook.

After seeing a new doctor for only 20 minutes, Susanna becomes committed by him to a mental institution. She becomes friends with Polly, a girl who had covered herself in gasoline and lit herself on fire, Lisa, the insomniac who is desperate for escape, no matter how poorly she could handle the 'real world', and Daisy, a beautiful bullimic girl who gets full chickens from her dad and keeps every carcass. Among these girls, Susanna desperately searches for sanity, knowing that she was not meant to be kept locked up here.

Keysen uses simple, straight forward words that can not be misunderstood. This helps us easily understand the moods that each passage is supposed to give off because each word has more value and impact. Along with this, she uses short sentences that are to the point. In the book, there are no hidden meanings behind her words; what she wants you to know, she tells you instead of letting the reader figure it out for themselves. An example of this is how on the first page, Keysen asks her roomate about undergoing shock therapy.

"And then what?" I asked.

"Darkness," She replied.

This quote, in few words, captures the eerie darkness of the conversation. This is something Keysen does phenomonally throughout the book. The more you read, the more you can comprehend about her, and you learn what to expect language-wise from her. The diction seems to come out just as an ordinary person would speak, allowing you to connect better with the character because all the answers about what she means is laid out right in front of you.

This book would be best recommended for women over the age of 13. The book talks about psychoanalysis and requires a certain amount of maturity to understand the nature and importance of the book. Also, this book can be recommended for those who have a dark sense of humor or like morbid books. The book describes all the disorders that each of them have and has the ability to make some of them seem comical. If you enjoyed the movie Girl, Interrupted, they will most likely enjoy reading the book, also. Two similar books are White Oleander and She's Come Undone. While White Oleander has a similar writing sense and inner conflict within the character, She's Come Undone revolves around similar ideas.




Rating:
Summary: what it is like to be in a mental hospital
Review: In the late 1960s, the author of this book spent about two years on the ward for teenage girls at McLean Hospital, a renowned psychiatric hospital. She was diagnosed with a mental illness, "borderline personality" disorder and depression. Her first psychologist sent her there after trying to kill herself with a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of vodka. When she got to the hospital and checked herself in she met some of the patients she would be living with in her ward. She roomed with a girl named Georgina who went crazy and was a pathological liar. Other girls she got to know was Polly who lit herself on fire and the most influential girl she met was Lisa, she was clinically a psycho but loved challenges and escaping, she loved her freedom. Every time they would catch Lisa after leaving they would give her shock treatment. The girls were parentally damaged from the word "checks" and would do almost anything to have sexual relations. They were not allowed to have anything sharp so the girls would rarely allowed to shave unless a nurse watched them like a hawk to make sure they were using the blade correctly. This book had dark humor and a page to page insight on what is it like to be in a hospital.
The book was about the author. She grew up in New York in the 1960s and had a bright life and had potential to go far until this incident happened. I think by far this book was one of the weirdest made you think kind of book I have ever read. I would defiantly recommend it.


Rating:
Summary: Girl Interrupted
Review: Set in a psychiatric hospital in 1967, the story is told by 18-year-old Susanna, who is dealing with depression and spending her days in McLean Hospital near Boston. We learn about the hospital and all the different patients through her eyes, while trying to understand her mental illness. First there was the suicide attempt, a halfhearted one because Kaysen made a phone call before popping 50 aspirins, 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."

I like this book a lot. I'm not a big reader, but when I do get into a book it's usually a biography or something that could really happen in life. This book shows mental illness from a point of view you wouldn't normally expect to see it from unless you experienced it yourself. For such a serious subject, I personally think it's told in a very playful way, almost sarcastically. But it's what happened to Kaysen, so considering she did a very good job of not making it boring there was always something going on. It also shows you how things were dealt with back in the late 60's. And how they are dealt with so differently know. It really makes you look at life in a different way. It really helps you to think about your life and choices you have to make. It makes you goes deep into your heart and mind.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about real life situations. If you like to read a book with a lot of opinion, this is a good one. I really liked Girl Interrupted. It taught me a lot about how life is, and how you have to take it as it comes at you.

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Rating:
Summary: best book
Review:
In the novel eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen is sent away to a psychiatric hospital. At the hospital she meets girls that are also going through psychiatric problems. It is scary to read about the conditions the girls had to live in and how they were treated. It is also interesting to read about the relationships and personalities of the girls with their illnesses.
Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The book really portrays Susanna's diagnosis and explains her symptoms. One of Susanna's symptoms is self-mutilation. For example, she would bang her wrist on the metal part of a chair.
This book is even more fascinating because the book is based upon Susanna's own life experiences. She explains the difference between mind and brain. She also shows the hardships of getting a job when employers know you are from a psychiatric hospital. I think the book questions what is to be considered "mentally insane" and "normal". In the end Susanna describes her perception of life with a painting which she sees in a museum where a girl sits in an imperfect world.
I think this book was hard to read but was interesting. It gives you a real understanding of the life and thoughts of a person with a mental illness and the hardships that they have to endure.

Rating:
Summary: A Moving and Honest Portrait of Mental Illness
Review: This slim memoir of a college student who suffers a "breakdown" honestly explores the details of mental illness, specifically "borderline personality" disorders. The account starts in a cold, almost frightening way: the first page is a copy of author Kaysen's case record folder. The reader then is given a fleeting description of the quiet moments leading up to Kaysen's lengthy hospitalization, and then is shown more official documents. This juxtaposition of the clinical with the personal highlights exactly what this memoir aims to express, that the darkness of mental disease has a face, a voice, that can be hidden by labels and diagnoses.

Kaysen's difficult and often terrifying journey - from the ordinary daughter of two achieving parents to a patient at a psychiatric hospital to, tentatively, a recovered young woman - is at once moving and beautiful. Even when the author asks questions that many before her have asked, she makes them seem fresh: "What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?" She explores her illness at its most intimate moments and often follows her breaks with reality with detached physician reports, giving the reader both inside and outside perspectives. Through her interactions with other patients, Kaysen makes it clear that not everyone is as fortunate as she, since some cannot extricate themselves from their illness. Interestingly, despite once not believing that she really had bones inside her, Kaysen is not convinced she was mentally ill; if nothing else, this questions the internal changes we've been taught to accept as part of the onset of mental illness.

This book should not be read by anyone believing she is slipping toward insanity, but it might be a comfort to those who have already emerged. Kaysen is at once ordinary and gifted despite this turbulent part of her life. More importantly, this book should be read by the loved ones of those in distress, for it gives a human dimension to what is often ostracized. Understanding the thought processes of at least one stricken young women goes a long way to having compassion for and understanding others.