Monday, May 28, 2007

Girl, Interupted

From the back cover:

'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 MLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital renowned or its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles - as or 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 specific dimension to our definitions o sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.'

This book seemed rather disjointed to me; the chapters didn't seem to go together and some of the events appeared out of order. While it's subject was very interesting it was not very well written. The part I most enjoyed was her discussion of her diagnosis at the end of the book. There were several points where I wanted to stop reading, but kept going only because my best friend was also reading it and wanted to discuss it with me.

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