I'm not quite halfway through this book and it is KILLING ME!!! Maybe it's just because I've never really dealt with depression, but all of her whining about how hard her life is and how black the vacant place where her soul should be and how much more depressed she is than anyone else and how no one understands her... Blah blah blah. Ugh. This line, page fifty something, pretty much sums it up for me at this point in the "story.""Nothing about my life seemed worthy of art or literature or even of just plain life. It seemed too stupid, too girlish, too middle-class."Amen, sista. If you'd just kept that attitude I wouldn't be stuck finishing your horribly boring book. And yet I plod on...UPDATE:Finally, done. The last fifty pages almost made it worth reading. Once she finally gets help and starts to talk about how prozac has saturated our society (what I was expecting the book to be about in the first place), it actually got interesting. Incidentally, she admits (in the epilogue, I think) that her story is self-indulgent and even often annoying. She gets a little judgmental about the overuse of prozac (what, only she is allowed to REALLY be depressed?), but I found myself at least partially agreeing with her. Anyway, I don't know that I would recommend this one to just anyone, but if you're interested in depression and have a high tolerance for a "woe-is-me" teenagerish voice, it wasn't completely unreadable. ( )

Very early in my life it was too late, quoted from The Lover, begins this memoir. Ditto. I could not finish this book, that much was clear early on. I have some experience with depression, and thought this would be an interesting or insightful read. I was wrong. I could not get involved with the story, or care deeply enough for the writer to continue on, I just found it whiny and depressing and frustrating. I skimmed through, hoping for a hook, but in the end, decided this book was not for me. Best to quit than continue to judge. Unrated, unfinished and off my tbr pile.

It's very easy to feel sympathy for Elizabeth Wurtzel in the first few chapters of the book. Towards the end I found her nearly unbearable. She was trying to express how violent her moods swings were and how unlikeable a person she was, and in that sense the book is triumphant, but, it also makes the book very difficult to read. ( )

When I first started reading this book, I thought the similarities in my life would make it too hard to read. Turns out it was actually the writing that made it too hard to read. It is a very important book, no doubt. If anything, it helps one see and recognize when help beyond friends and family is needed for depression. It felt self-involved and annoying at times, and I know that this is exactly what depression is about and what is feels like, but it made the book, at times, unreadable. The title does nothing for the book until the last 30 pages, which all too quickly sew shut the gashes and wound this book opens in Wurtzel’s life. This book’s climax and ending happen almost in the same heartbeat, leaving me feel as though there was a publication date that needed to be met, rather than feeling like everything was summed up and rendered as a memoir tends to be. I won’t be keeping this book on my shelf, but I’m glad I finally read it. At least there’s that. ( )

Wurtzel can be exhausting at times, but this book was something I could relate to. ( )