Girl, Interrupted

Rating:
Summary: Very Good and MUCH BETTER than the movie
Review: I throughly enjoyed reading this book. While it was hard to follow at times because of the nature of it and the "skipping around," I think it was a wonerful story. Kaysen's tramatized young adulthood can relate well to the plight of young girls today. For teenage women, mothers, educators of girls, and counselors this is a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: One of my heroes
Review: I like this woman...I think I really like this woman. Kaysen has given me a blueprint for my own memoir. It's well written and it tends to give you her point of view on things, which is very, very good..."normal people" have a hard time understanding us strange ones, lol.

Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: Susanna is a great writer and obviously has an unusual story to tell. Since the circumstances of the story are so interesting, as a writer all Susanna needs to do is "get out of the way" and I think she does this well. She has a terse writing style which I find appealing. Her character descriptions are first rate, and I think she has a subtle but keen sense of humor. She and Kay Jamison ("An Unquiet Mind") have written the finest mental illness memoirs available. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".

Rating:
Summary: Simply Amazing
Review: I read this book 3 times within the last 2 years. It takes you into a new world. You can invision the place in which she stays. The descriptions are wonderfull. You become caught up within this world of "sane" and "insane". Deffinetly a must read, if you are into psychological books go for it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I think this is a good book to read. i believe if you are someone who is going through these types of problems or have depression, this will teach you alot of how it feels to be in a hospital and what you get out of it. Even if you are not in any of these situations it is a good book for people who think they might be going into a type of career in this field. if you are looking for any other books to read that are simular to this one i would suggest reading CUT and is a little bite simular to girl interrupted.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Point Of View
Review: I viewed the movie before I had read the book, and I have to say that I like the the book better. The book obviously described Susanna's descent into "madness" and also let me know what happened to her after she was discharged. The movie kind of left me hanging as to waht happened to her. I really enjoyed the book more than I liked the movie... highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: This book is insane! But good!
Review: This book is crazy and also good in that sense. It got a little depressing from time to time. The thing I most liked about this book is it's synoposis, "You can either go on with life, or give up." Ans Susanna Kaysen did not give up, she was brilliant with writing as phsycological manifolds kicked in her curiousity of being crazy! That's why I think we should see her as a Girl Interrupted by madness, and that's why we should give this book credit!

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking/Hopeful
Review: While the movie gets lost somewhere in the midst of big name actresses and the urge be historically accurate, the book cuts a path though the dark forests of mental illness. Susanna's memior is formatted as several short essays, not chronological, and therefore is able to communicate beyond the actual words the changes in mind and memory. This is a beautiful book.

This book challenges assumptions commonly held by juxposition of concrete images and anticdotes. Who decides one is crazy? How can a fallible being decide? Why are some ideas deemed inappropriate, thus thoughts of a crazy person, when everyday sees even more outragous ideas put into place everyday by leaders or celebrities.

Reading this book was a revelation that other people have the same thoughts, doubts, and fears as I do. I was assured with the realization that there is life beyond mental illness. Life doesn't stop, but you can still be part of it. I recommend the title "The Magic Daughter" in addition to this one.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!!
Review: For a long long time I had been wanting to read this book. I had seen the movie like a year ago or may be more and the movie had had such a great impact that I had made up my mind to read this memoir. And then I saw it gleaming, all shiny and new and I could not help myself but pick it up.

After a long time I finished a book in one sitting. Girl, Interrupted is about a girl being interrupted, being forbidden to grow up and locked in an asylum. The Mclean Institute for Mental Health located at Massachussets. Famous for accomodating people like Sylvia Plath. The title of the book is taken from
Vermeer's painting : Girl, Interrupted at her music and its an awesome book.

Kaysen takes us through the entire journey of being mad. Right from the detailed and minutest explanations of a parrallel universe to various mental conditions that exist. She has described people, sane and insane, drawing perceptions, all breathing and living, waiting to be free.

After reading this book I just had two questions hovering in my mind:

Is there any sanity left? Are sane people really sane?

Rating:
Summary: An excellent portrayal of such a stigmatizing pseudo-disorde
Review: A person can read any clinicians theories of what a person diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) thinks, feels and knows but Ms Kaysen truelly illuminates what others have left in the dark. Her emotional murals of sanity and insanity, real and fake and others are very much a poignant insight into the world of mental instability. She does a superb job of analyzing and critiquing the very diagnosis of BPD including pointing out how many of the symptoms are what any person in their adolensce may go through-you just don't see people 30+ years old with this supposed disorder! Fabulous!