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Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen. Vintage Books: 1994 (paperback). ISBN: 0679746048. 169 pages.
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Perhaps you saw the 1999 film version of this memoir, starring Winona Ryder,
Angelina Jolie, and Whoopi Goldberg. If so, you saw a somewhat sensationalized rendering of Kaysen's more sophisticated,
more subtle remembrance of the time she spent in McLean Hospital during the late sixties. Kaysen steers clear of the
dramatic revelations and tear-jerking images that a record of a teen's descent into alleged insanity might so easily evoke.
She doesn't make her stay at a mental institution sound like a day at the zoo, but she doesn't ignore the potential for
humor in her unusual history either. Instead, Kaysen presents us with a meditation on madness that is both realistic and
surreal, as the adult author tries to make sense of the thought processes that weakened her adolescent self to the point of
frightening mental instability. Kaysen has a mission in this memoir, but it's the best kind of mission-one that creates
questions instead of imposing answers. Throughout the book, she challenges her readers to examine the nature of what
distinguishes the healthy mind from the unbalanced, and what separates the moderately unbalanced mind from the truly
irretrievable. She encourages us to consider the fuzzy and problematic boundaries that divide those who see things
differently from those who see things as they are-wait till you read the book to figure out who is who, and which is which.
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