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Summary: erin and matei's critique review
Review: The book was an emotional story that involved the reader to a point where they felt like they were Susanna. The story taught readers about the distress of mental hospitals and how lucky peoploe are and how they should appreciate life and what they have. Susanna Kaysen brought i humor to her story to try to lighten the mood but at the same time gave the readers her perspective on life and craziness. She often asked herself what defines craziness? Am I just as crasy as the next person? Her ideas about the first interpreter vs. the second really messes with the readers mind because we can all relate to what she was asking.Does it mean your crazy when the voice of the second interpreter doesn't interfere with the voice of the first?
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Summary: gripping memoir
Review: This is a true story of Kaysen's time in a mental institution in 1960s Massachusetts. She chased some pills with vodka when reality got "too dense" for her. She details her relationships and observations of the other girls in the institution and her own feelings on her path to 'wellness', whatever that may be.Written in the stream-of-conscious form of a diary, "Girl Interrupted" includes memos from the psychologists who observed her and stated her progress towards what is considered normal. A good read, made better by the fact that it is true. You will feel you know Susanna personally, and sympathize for her, even when she has no sympathy for herself and those around her.
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Summary: A Life, Interrupted
Review: Girl, Interrupted is the story of Susanna Kaysen, who voluntarily checked herself into MacLean Hospital for a two year stay in 1967.
Susanna describes hospital life, her fellow inmates, the nurses, the doctors, and the staff with unemotional clarity. The reader is given an inside look at life in a mental institution as Susanna is checked in, diagnosed, and undergoes treatment for her "borderline personality" diagnosis.
It was a very interesting read, but an unemotional one. Ms. Kaysen writes about herself, and everyone else, with startling objectivity. It almost reads as a case study, but a very interesting one. The people in this memoir are very real.
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Summary: I really enjoyed this book
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book because it wasn't full of a lot of self pity. It is very well written, and tends to jump around in time. The book is about the author, Susanna, who is unexpectedly shipped to a mental institution for a "rest" and lands there for almost 2 years. For somebody suffering from a mood disorder, there is a lot they can relate to, and you really get into the characters.
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Summary: I'm a girl, interrupted too...
Review: Sanity is something most people cling to like a security blanket. They think the "insane" people of the world don't cling to it also, but in the memoir of Susanna Kaysen, you see that she does. All she wanted was to be a normal girl, but when normality abandoned her, she had to check herself into McLean hospital to figure out how to regain it. After spending a year and a half in the hospital, she left with no great advice to give on how to live her life or with a realization of what the meaning of life is. This doesn't mean that she learned nothing. Far from that. She learned more than almost anyone else did. She learned how to survive. Not how to live, but how to survive. No one can be taught in a hospital about how to live, because the whole essence of the hospital prevents the person from living their life. When the money ran out, she was kicked out of the hospital. This, sadly, is how the system works. Of course, she'd only expected to be in there for a couple of weeks. Weeks had turned into months and months into years, and by the time she was released, she thought she was a forever patient. She made friends with the other members of the ward, because all of them had been doomed to longer than expected stays. They were a tight group. A group of people who cared for one another, took care of one another, but also aggrivated each other in so many ways. I wanted to read this book for two reasons: 1.) I loved the movie it was based on. It's a bit different. Some of the scenes are the same, and if you've already seen the movie, you'll be picturing the characters doing certain things as you read about them in the book. 2.) Susanna was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which is my diagnosis. I wanted to see how she (at the same age) handled the diagnosis. I see many similarities in the diagnosis, as well as differences. I also saw many differences/similarities in our psych hospital experiences. I love this book, and I think it is very well-written. I am glad that Susanna decided to share her story with everyone. Maybe a book like this will better help more people to understand mental illness.
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Summary: Very insightful look into herself & her "caretakers"
Review: If you enjoyed the movie based on _Girl, Interrupted_, you will likely enjoy the book even more, as it goes much deeper inside Kaysen's thoughts and feelings, and spends more time on each character in general. Kaysen does a fantastic job of describing how she felt during her stay at McLean Hospital; her prose is highly-descriptive, with an almost poetic feel to some of the passages. For some reason, one bit replays itself in my head, even when I haven't read this book for some time: "Oh Valerie," I said, "you promised --" Then the Thorazine hit me. It was like a wall of water, strong but soft...My legs and feet felt like mattresses, they were so huge and dense. Valerie and Georgina felt like mattresses too, big soft mattresses pressing on either side of me. It was comforting." As she explores the depths of her psyche, she often uses dark humor, which is a very effective tool. The tactics she and other patients used to manipulate the hospital staff are often brilliant, sometimes poignantly sad. Kaysen's unflinching description of the sociopathic Lisa feels dead-on; the reader simultaneously loves and hates her, and agonizes with Kaysen as her worship of Lisa leads to disappointment again and again. I've read this book several times, and will read it again in the future - it's an often dark, often inspiring look at the mental hospitals of the sixties, and at the nature of the human mind. Kaysen spares us no detail when describing her own disorder and behavior, or the disorders and behaviors of others. A very frank book, and an excellent read.
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Summary: Well Done
Review: Disturbing, but sensitive and thoughtful. Is it really just a judgement call between "normal" and "insane?"
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Summary: Girl, Interrupted
Review: I read this book as soon as i seen the movie. I was so much in love with the movie i wanted to read the book so it could go into more detail. Thats exactly what the book did too. If you loved the movie as much as i did then you will love the book more. You learn more about a character and see what happens to susanna after she has been released. Everytime after I write a review i always want to do that Do Do Dooooo like in reading rainbow. Anyways the book is so awesome!
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Summary: Girl Amazed,
Review: In 1967 18-year-old Susana Kaysen was sent to Mc Lean mental institution, after spending no more then an hour in a doctors office. At admission she was diagnosed with a psychoneurotic depressive reaction, and personality pattern disturbance.
She was a high school graduate, that for threw past year had been living with her boyfriend, but that was finished when she got into the hospital.
In the hospital she made new friends, and saw and learned many different things. During her year in the mental institute she wrote a journal, which is actually the book. In her journal she tells what happens in the hospital, how they treat the patients, what they give to them, and what they do to them. She describes a lot about the way the hospital looks and where the usually like to "hang out." There are many different people she talks about in the book, some being the doctors and nurses in the hospital, and some of them being the girls in the hospital. She tells what they do, how they behave, what the look likes, and how she feels towards them. Lisa is always speaking her mind and listens to no one. Georgina, her room maid, is like her best friend.
The story is a true story and the author is the one writing about what she had gone through in life.
The book has a non-chronological order that makes it so great to read. Sometimes she has flash backs about high school, and how she used to behave before going into the hospital.
Many times I felt like I was right there with her because she described every thing with so much heart.
I think Girl, Interrupted is an amazing book and every teenage girl should read it!
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Summary: The Author is in Denial
Review: Susanna Kaysen challenges the mental health care system but doesn't really give much insight on what it is to be insane. This is not Life-Size, by Jennifer Shute, about a woman with anorexia who almost starves herself to death. Shute examines the issues wrapped up in compulsive self-starvation -- sexuality, the fear of intimacy, the terror of the loss of control that outweighs the need for relationships or even life itself -- even when they're embarrassing. On the other hand, Susanna Kaysen's account is so full of minimization and denial that it illuminates nothing. The minimization and denial are not for effect, either, in the way that, in Rousseau's Confessions, Rousseau recounts a scene from his childhood where he is unjustly accused of breaking or stealing a comb; he writes the scene so that you doubt him too. The passage creates a relationship between writer and reader that mirrors the relationship between his accuser and himself, and highlights a certain masochistic pathology of his character that you see throughout the Confessions. Susanna Kaysen's minimizations don't shed light. For example, one of the issues that contributed to her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was "promiscuity." She suggestst that, if she had been a man, she would not have been diagnosed or confined in a mental hospital because the definition of "promiscuity" is different for a man than for a woman. Of course, by arguing about numbers she ignores the real point: the compulsiveness or self-destructiveness of her sexual behavior is what is relevant, not the number of partners; just as spending a lot of money going shopping might be considered a symptom of mental illness if the spending is without regard to income or items purchased, or has a compulsive quality, but it may be a hobby if the spender has plenty of money for the things she buys and purchases appropriately (an inappropriate purchase might be fifteen gallons of milk by a single woman -- how could she use it all? -- just because it's on sale.) Ms. Kaysen includes sections of her medical records for effect, but interestingly, admitting information -- that is, why she had herself committed -- was blacked out by the author. It's a shame that she spent so much time in a mental hospital without gaining insight into her condition, and it's a shame for the reader that she illuminates very little about mental illness.
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