Rating: 
Summary: Pure honesty and intellect
Review: Sometimes, you come across a book that is unbelievably profound in its honesty and intelligence. Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted is that book. Ms. Kaysen tells an enlightening story of the 18 months she spent in McLean Hospital, a mental institution, as the result of a failed suicide attempt in 1967. In the novel, Ms. Kaysen explores the physiological being and mind of the girls in her ward, including herself and poses interesting questions about who's crazy and who's in charge of figuring it out. Girl, Interrupted is a novel of stunning proportion. Kaysen's style of writing is electric and simple. The informality of the novel allows the reader to understand and identify with the characters, and the utter complexity of the plot allows for the mind to wonder. While the novel was riveting, Kaysen's lack of chronological order makes the novel a little hard to totally understand in one reading and the novel becomes a bit confusing. Kaysen shows mental patients in a new light, not as lunatics, but as real people with problems which people use to classify them as crazy. Girl, Interrupted teaches that inside everyone, there is insecurity and fear, which can really be used to classify anyone as crazy. If you look hard enough, you can see yourself, or something you want to be in each character. This book can help show a little something about human nature and humans in general. I'd definitely recommend Girl, Interrupted to teens from 13 up and to young adult in their early to mid 20s. Any younger than 13 and certain themes would have to be explained and any older than mid 20s and the novel's value would deteriorate because that age range would not be able to appreciate the lessons learned and the advice subtly cast though out the novel. The novel has a great deal of language and scenes some people may find disturbing. Girl, Interrupted is a fine novel, built with creativity.
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Summary: COMING OF AGE IN A PSYCHIATRIC WARD
Review: Who am I really, and where am I going? In this autobiographical memoir, the author seeks these answers for herself. After a while we start wondering also, as we view life through Susanna Kaysen's eyes, her unbalanced ward-mates and experience the inside machinations of a psychiatric ward. What is illusion? what is reality? The book is bizarre, yet engrossing. Yes, there is a strong resemblance to "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." After you finish reading this book, look at the "Girl Interrupted" film version starring Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Whoopie Goldberg. It is an equally powerful and entertaining representation of this young gifted, warped girl finding her true self and coming of age during 18 months in a hospital.
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Summary: Susanna Kaysen was indeed ill
Review: Susanna Kaysen's book was sparsely written - moving and emotionally stirring. The media has tried to portray her as a mixed up, misunderstood child of the Sixties, which is unfortunate. Susanna Kaysen was ill - Borderline Personality Disorder - is a character disorder and in her case a true diagnosis. She tried to commit suicide and experienced psychotic hallucinations. She's lucky they didn't give her a label of Schizophrenia - she'd still be hospitalized. It was common in those days to be misdiagnosed - she was lucky.
Rating:
Summary: Girl, Interrupted
Review: I just want to tell you all that this book, is one of the best books I have ever read. Susanna Kaysan is brillant! I really like her writing style. It really makes you think who the real insane people are. I would highly recommend reading this book if you like to be informed of what life can really be like. And you could get into the mind of a "crazy" person. Reading this book would not be a waste of time, it would probably be one of the best books you would ever read.
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Summary: Honest and humorous-an overall very well spent afternoon
Review: The book is a short and easy read of 168 pages (approx) with various photocopies of hospital forms inbetween the pages of medium sized text. It's a memoir about Susanna Kaysen's journey into a hostpial-a sychiatric hospital called McLean Hospital. And if I were to note that people such as Sylvia Plath and James Taylor were also clients at the same hospital it may interest you to see the colorful aray of incidents that happen at the hospital that although very serious, Ms. Kaysen seems to put in a highly amusing manner.
The book is at a level course of happenings and chapters even though it's set in a hospital that it makes you realise that the life inside the white walls of the hospital are practically the same as life in the outside world-just surprisingly more...safer and confined. Susanna Kaysen has been able to put her words on paper so honestly and ingeniously that I'm sure that anyone with a spare afternoon will surely enjoy reading it as well as those who have a disorder of some sort (like myself) who will easily be able to see a whole new side of humor.
You want to know what I think honestly? This is one book you won't regret reading.
Rating:
Summary: An insightfull comment of mental disease and society
Review: Whether or not you believe that young Susanna Kaysen should have been in a mental hospital at age 18, you have to sympathize with how she feels about it. Society, as a whole, treats anyone with a mental "problem" as a freak and social leper. The book really shows how a normal, very nice human being, is seperated from the rest of the world and stamped as a "freak". Most of the second half of the book really concentrates on how other people unfairly lable anyone with a problem. People diagnosed with mental disorders end up seeing them as shamefull, because that's how society feels. That isn't true; it's a disease like any other, and the author really shows it and explains it. You can related in every way to Susanna and her friends, and the book really gets you thinking about who is crazy and who is "normal"?
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Summary: An Excellent Must Read!
Review: I excitedly saw the movie, and fell in love! It's about a teenage girl [susanna kaysen] who is diagnosed with borderline personalit, which even she doesn't exactly understand. So when she is sent to a hospital, she describes everything very detailed. Her life there, her aspects, and her views on almost everything. She tells you her complex theries and opinions. So, when my school assigned us to write a book review, I immediately decided on Girl Interrupted. I axiously bought the book, and began to read through it. I was shocked that the book was written without the sense of outgoingness, and was in a way disappointed that the character (susanna) wasn't as wild and extreme. Even so, I find the book to be eloquently written. I got confused at first, but after a while, I got used to it. There are confusing parts, but it made me think, and I was able to make an educated guess. The language isn't that exciting, but I still love the book, and can't wait to read it again! I do recommend to read the book first, and then see the movie. It will help you to understsand the book better, because the movie keeps on getting me confused with the book. Please, read it and give it a chance. I am very attached to this book, and am sure you will be to!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting if a little flawed
Review: In 1967, at the age of 18, Susanna Kaysen was admitted to a hospital for the mentally ill. She stayed there for a little under two years and this book is a series of essays about her time in the hospital. It is not a diary and there is little in the way of continuity from one part of the book to another but this book is about the experiences of hospitalisation rather than being a narrative of a period of time. The book opens a window on life as seen by a patient in a psychiatric hospital and what we see through the window is highly revealing. While the author and her fellow patients may have appeared to be behaving strangely, unpredictably or crazily, they had reasons for what they did that seemed fine to them at the time. Less convincing are the parts where the author tries to talk about the rights and wrongs of sending her to the hospital. She seems to want to make the point that she was going through the difficult transition from being a girl to being a woman and was having a harder time than most people. She feels that this does not justify the way that she was sent to, and kept in, the hospital. That may be the case but, whereas the description of her time is the hospital is rightly one person's story, the rights and wrongs of her being sent there needs an objective input to be convincing. The writing style is clear and direct and the whole book is very readable. While it is quite possible to read this book in one sitting, I'd not recommend that. You will get a lot more out of it if you slow down and take a couple of days to finish it and have time to think between every few chapters.
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Summary: a new book for me!
Review: this was an entertaining, thought provoking book, one that i have quoted many times since i read it. If you've seen the movie, don't expect the book to be too similar, for it is not. I read this over the course of a few days and i am anxious to read it again, to catch more details i missed in the initial reading. pick it up for a good read!
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Summary: Don't bother with the movie
Review: So, I saw the movie (Angelina Jolie was great). Don't bother. Read the book.
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