- Author: Susanna Kaysen
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Lexile: 760
- Publisher: Vintage (April 19, 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679746048
- ISBN-13: 978-0679746041
- Book Review: goodreads.com
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 McLean Hospital. She spent most of
the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric
hospital as renowned for its famous clientele -- Sylvia Plath, Robert
Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles -- as for 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 and
specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness
and recovery.
Susanna is rushed to the hospital. Afterwards she discusses this with a
psychiatrist. She had been having some delusions. She had also been
having an affair with the husband of her parents' friend. The doctor
suggests that combining a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of vodka was a
suicide attempt. This she denies. He recommends a short period of rest
at Claymoore. Claymoore is a private mental hospital full of noisy,
crazy people. Georgina is a pathological liar. Polly has been badly
scarred by fire. Daisy won't eat in the presence of other people. Lisa
is a sociopath, the biggest exasperation for the staff - like Nurse
Valerie - and the biggest influence on the other girls in the hospital.
Lisa has a history of escapes, so gaining access to personal medical
files is not a problem... Susanna's boyfriend Toby is concerned that she
seems too comfortable living with her institutionalized friends...
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