It was quite boring. ( )

In Girl, Interrupted, Kaysen tells the story of her time in a mental hospital without lies or embellishment. At times just the story of a group of teenage girls, Kaysen’s memoir tells not only of life in a psychiatric ward, but also the life of a close-knit group of friends who look out for each other. The girls' acts of protecting each other from the world around them can be seen in different forms throughout most people’s lives, sane or insane.
Kaysen was one of the most "sane" girls in her ward which made her story relatable to all readers, not just as a tale of insanity, but as a portrayal of the fact that the line between sane and insane is ever changing, and easily crossed.

I have to say, I was disappointed by this book. I'd seen the film, which had quickly catapulted its way into my 'favourites of all time', and was eager to read Kaysen's story for myself. Unfortunately, this was a case of the movie being better than the book, memoir or no memoir.

I enjoyed the movie because it had style. It had a lot of humour, a lot of heart, whilst never shying away from the darkness and turbulent reality of living in a mental institution. There was a story, a chronology, and I cared deeply about each and every one of the women so that when bad things happened, I was devastated, and when good things happened, I smiled too. Being manic depressive myself, I related to them in their spirited and joyful moments as well as in their miserable and frightened ones.

Kaysen's book, by contrast, just doesn't work that way. It is extremely disjointed, with no chronology to speak of, and therefore rather confusing. The small, sometimes bizarre episodes skip between times and places, and are never long enough for the reader to become attached to anyone. The good and bad of these tormented lives doesn't have the same resonance, and so I ended up reading the whole book without being moved at all. I can see what Kaysen was trying to do - to show the reader how her mind was working, how images and memories and hallucinations melded into one whirlwind of madness, how time moves differently in an institution - but so much is lost this way that it almost cancels out its own meaning.

On the other hand, some of the the descriptions of difficult concepts and experiences are brilliantly written. Moments of psychosis are evoked with brutal clarity, giving a vivid picture of the bizarre images and terrifying emotions that can overtake even the brightest minds.

Ultimately though, this was an empty book for me. I found its style and construction interesting enough to write my A-level coursework on it, but like 'The Bell Jar' and 'Catcher in the Rye', those other beacons for alienated teens everywhere, it just didn't shift the earth for me. I haven't kept my copy and I'll be sticking to the movie in the future! ( )

First, be warned: this is nothing like the movie. Some of the characters are the same, but this book does not follow the same linear, safe direction as the film. Most of the events of the movie don’t even take place in the book. This is a memoir of the truest sense, in that the author explores simply her own understandings of her experience, her illness, and her surroundings. Kaysen’s diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, although not discussed until the final chapters, is the overall theme of this book. Kaysen, like many of her fellow patients, is straddling the line between sanity and insanity, between the world outside the hospital and the world inside. She identifies with both the other patients and the nurses, who each represent the world they inhabit. Even though she feels a kinship with her fellow “insane” patients, she also longs for the sense of normalcy that the nurses bring in from the outside.

Although she is declared “recovered” upon her discharge in 1969, Kaysen freely admits that once you’re insane, that other world never really disappears. It hovers around the edges, and even affects people who have never been inside a hospital, as if she carries a “crazy cloud” around with her. Kaysen explores the difference between insanity of the brain and insanity of the mind, arguing that each need to be treated differently. She also includes actual documents from her medical records from her time at the hospital, which provide an interesting backdrop for the narrative of the so-called “insane” person. This isn’t The Bell Jar. There is no real mental breakdown, no literary examination of one’s own insanity. Although Kaysen does explore her own illness to a degree, this is mostly an exploration of the dual worlds that mentally ill people must inhabit: the world of the sane, and the world of the insane. ( )

really good, but for the first time i preferred the film ( )