This book captured my interest with its first sentence and held it right until the last page. I've been diagnosed with mental illness. I've stayed in psychiatric facilities. I share many experiences with the author, and I feel like I can relate to what she is saying. I've had similar "problems" with patterns--fabric designs, tiling, colors--that would confound or entrance me with a plethora of impertinent information. Things often hold either too much or not enough meaning for me to feel interested in them. And I share the same doubtful attitude, "is this really that crazy?"

One thing that seems to be true is that when a person spends enough time in an institution, it reaches a point when a disorder is all they have left to identify with. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the diagnosis from the person.

I'm glad someone had the courage to write about this. Someone who felt rejected by society or "shut out of life" was able to make a living for herself...by her own standards. To me, that's very comforting. I hope it inspires the rest of us who don't live the social norm. ( )

'Girl Interrupted' is a fascinating memoir, organised in a chaotic way that reflects Kaysen's life during the period she describes. This slim volume (it just stretches to 169 pages in the 1999 Virago edition) consists of a mixture of vignettes and photocopies of hospital records which simultaneously illuminate and contrast each other to give the reader an impression of a fragmented and occasionally nightmarish stay in a psychiatric hospital. Kaysen's history is fairly famous since the 1999 film of the same name starring Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder but the book is worth reading for its precise and strangely absorbing accounts of life in a 'parallel universe'.

Kaysen's written style is simple, precise and evocative. Short chapters focus on key incidents, characters and reflections in an almost poetic and often darkly humorous manner. The vignettes are not organised chronologically, although they do begin by describing Kaysen's memory of the interview that resulted in her hospitalisation. Throughout the book Kaysen refers back to this episode, which she feels convinced consisted of a twenty minute interview and a promise of rest, but which resulted in an eighteen month stay in the McLean Hospital. Her half-hearted suicide attempt she describes as an attempt to kill the part of her who wanted to kill herself, and it is clear that she does not feel she needed to be institutionalised. The doctor comes across as patronising and overly analytical, imbuing a simple physical act Kaysen commits with undue psychological significance. It is clear that Kaysen accepted her committal, waiting for the taxi and signing herself in at the hospital, but the imperfections in the systems of 1967 that allowed her to be incarcerated after such a brief examination are also highlighted and encourage the reader to question the professionals' judgements.
As the memoir progresses, the reader is introduced to a range of characters with brief summaries of their condition, progress and methods of coping with institutional life. The sense of time dragging on endlessly is captured perfectly in the monotony of 'checks' and cigarettes, watching and waiting, meds and curse words. Often we are given a focused account of a key incident from their incarceration. The characters are interesting and well-realised, although their histories, and often their futures, are under-developed, which leaves the reader wondering what really happened to them.

Kaysen's history outside the hospital is also often unclear. She gets married and the marriage fails, but due to the unconnected nature of the book and the focus on the actual time spent in the institution, her relationships with her parents and her husband are sketchy, their characters absent from what is essentially an exploration of her history. This has frustrated some readers but it does not detract from the powerful nature of the central issues the book explores.

The photocopies of hospital records which are interspersed throughout the book emphasise the clinical manner in which a very personal struggle was treated by the nurses and doctors. Although Kaysen is only occasionally explicitly critical of specific professionals, the whole system appears to be set up to follow routines, rules and drug programmes rather than to cure patients. As Kaysen's account veers between episodes it becomes apparent that being in hospital did not help her, except by giving her some respite from responding to people in the outside world. It did, however, encourage her to question her diagnosis as she clearly feels she is in a different category to inmates who receive shock-therapy or rub their faeces on their walls and bodies.

As the book draws to a close, Kaysen begins to consider the differences between 'mind' and 'brain' and between 'mental illness' and 'difference', questioning whether she really met the criteria of the personality disorder she was diagnosed with - and whether those criteria are just. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the book as the reader is drawn into these questions and inspired to consider how fine that line between sanity and reality can be.

Overall, this is a powerful and fascinating read which raises important issues. It is not to be confused with a self help guide as there is not great recovery scheme or advice, merely a sense that Kaysen was never really crazy, simply interrupted in the death throes of adolescence. ( )

In 1967, Susanna Kaysen was diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder" and sent to McLean's in Cambridge at the age of eighteen. She stayed there for nearly two years, and in short, non-chronological vignettes describes her life there and shortly after being released.

Kaysen brings up questions about the definition of sanity - how do we know where the "border" is between sane and insane, especially when those definitions change over time? The disjointed narrative suited her account, but made it kind of hard for me to follow what was going on. ( )

Synopsis: In 1967, Susanna Kaysen is hospitalized after taking 50 aspirin and a session with a doctor whom she had never met. She was put into a taxi to McLean Hospital in Massachusetts - the same psychiatric hospital that housed Sylvia Plath, James Taylor, and Ray Charles. The story is intertwined with Kaysen's thoughts of how being hospitalized is like a parallel universe and narrative of the client's stay.

Pros and Cons: I did see the movie before I read the book and I did enjoy it, so maybe that clouded my thoughts of the book because the book did not live up to my expectations. Don't get me wrong, it is still an excellent book and I really liked it, but not as much as the movie. I was hoping for more discussion on her stay and the other clients. Her thoughts were interesting and demonstrate what a smart and confused mind she had. It also gives a picture of what it was like to be diagnosed with mental illness in the 60's. I think it would be somewhat different, but eerily similar to get that diagnosis now. Recommended to read the book first and watch the movie second :) ( )

Considering all the hype, I was expecting more from this book. It was definitely easy to read and had some interesting detail when she told her story in narrative form and not technical jargon, but I never found myself identifying or really sympathizing with her. It seems her perogative is to blame everyone else for her problems and she shows no real compassion for others' positions. Not a book I will think about much in the future. ( )