Happy Thursday friends! Today I wanted to share with you a quick review of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen.
This book is part of my reads for the May Challenge on Goodreads. Currently I have a total of nine books that I would like to read in May and Girl, Interrupted was the first of the nine I was able to complete.
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
Interested in buying a copy for yourself? Check out this link here.
This book is part of my reads for the May Challenge on Goodreads. Currently I have a total of nine books that I would like to read in May and Girl, Interrupted was the first of the nine I was able to complete.
About the Book:
Girl, Interrupted
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years in the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
My Thoughts:
If you did not already know, I have a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. So, of course, this book appealed to me as it was about a girls time spent in a psychiatric ward. Kaysen takes the reader through the day-to-day life of a person with mental illness and the reality of what it really meant to be hospitalized for mental illness. I enjoyed her style of writing and her voice throughout the book and how much detail she put into the telling of her story.
The book reads a bit more like diary entries and does not have a cohesive story, per se. However, when all of her "entries" are put together, the story comes together in a cohesive piece.
My favorite line from the book is on page 151: "It's what they cal people whose lifestyles bother them". This line struck me because I feel like every person experiences this feeling at least once in their lifetime. Does that mean that we are all crazy?
Interested in buying a copy for yourself? Check out this link here.
Interested to know what other books I have planned to read this year?
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Other Reviews of the Book:
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