Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen

From 1967 eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen spent two years at the famous McLean Hospital (of Sylvia Plath fame) in a psychiatric ward for teenage girls after a short session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before. Girl, Interrupted (first published in 1993) is a memoir of her time there and told in a series of short non-chronological vignettes in which we, and Kaysen, slowly try and piece together the events that led to her spending so long at McLean and get a portrait of life in this strange and sometimes disturbing environment. 'People ask, how did you get in there?' writes Kaysen. 'What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I ...  Read the complete review

'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 ...  Read the complete review

In 1967 Suzanna Kaysen walked into the office of a psychiatrist who suggested she needed a rest; two hours later she was in a ward at the famous Mclean Hospital (host to Ray Charles and Sylvia Plath amongst others) where she stayed for the next eighteen months. She was just 18 and the reasons for her incarceration seem inexplicable to those of us reading the book forty years later, but this is her autobiographical attempt to come to terms with her experiences and make sense of her treatment. I feel duty bound to first mention the length of this book; being only 168 pages long and divided into short chapters interspersed with blank pages and items from Kaysen's ...  Read the complete review

Having watched the film a couple of years ago, I finally got around to reading the book recently. Written by Susanna Kaysen herself, it follows her life in a psychiatric hospital, with accounts of her stay there, and the other people which she encountered. It is interrupted itself, with medical notes and hospital records, as well as her own writing about her time there. At a mere 169 pages, it is a fast read, but that doesn't make it easy. To be honest, I was anticipating something different having watched the film before reading. Each time an event happened in the book, I compared it to the film which, as good as I think it is, I can now say from ...  Read the complete review

I was recently told I 'just must see' a film. I immediately asked if there was a book I could read instead. This, is how I can about to read Girl, Interrupted. I've read several books that have centred around an individual's struggle with mental health, and I am always fascinated and moved by the hardship people have endured either through stigma, or just battling against their 'inner demons'. However, the circumstances in which Susanna came to find herself in the psychiatric hospital is a truly unnerving tale that unfortunately was a very common affair in the '60s and earlier. Girl, Interrupted is a very short (only 168 pages) account of an adolescent's ...  Read the complete review