Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad
Review: I found Susanna Kaysen's book to be entertaining and insightful, but I didn't find it as involving as I would have hoped. I wanted more to be written about the characters, their "disorders", and how they're coping with their supposed illnesses. Still, this book is funny, entertaining, and a good, mind-opening read.
Rating: 
Summary: Are the patients or the doctors crazy?
Review: Susanna Kaysen has an incredibly captivating writing style. Her attention to even the most minute and often overlooked detail is especially appreciated. I like to read the story that is behind the story and she tells just that. What I can't understand is how obtuse the staff of the hospital seemed to be. I felt more connected to the patients than I did to the staff, they actually seemed more "normal". What exactly is normal anyway? Kaysen sounds as if she would be a great person to know. Personality is everything and she has plenty of it.
Rating: 
Summary: The life of a 17 year old psychotic patient
Review: Imagine a story about a person going to a mental institute after only 15 minutes with a doctor. Well this is a true story about a girl that gets her "life interrupted" because a doctor assumes she is mentally insane and sends her to a mental institute. Susanna Kaysen is a 17 year old girl that wants to enjoy her life as a writer and not go to college. This story took place in 1967 and it was very unusual not to go to college and so an assumption was made that she was psychotic. Her parents really wanted her to go to college and become something she didn't want to be. The author uses very good voice and explains everything very thoroughly, it is written by the person that lived it. This book is a bit unusual compared to any other book of the same genre. You get a look at a bright young girl that gets sent to a mental institute because she wants to live her life differently then any other person. The author uses an unusual format. This is a bit complicating compared to most books I've read because the book jumped around a lot from different subjects to another. This book has been made in to a movie and I really enjoyed each of them equally. I recommend this book to any female that enjoys real life drama. I found that most males didn't enjoy the movie and since the book is just like the movie I don't think they would enjoy the book.
Rating:
Summary: Shows how much has changed...
Review: First of all, it's not like the movie. Is it better or worse, I'm not sure. I don't like how the movie took such creative liberty with the story and it's characters but I also don't like the way the book jumps around so often. Though some might say the chaotic way the memories are written reflect the author and main character's own unconventional thinking. The book shows us how people with "mental problems" were all lumped together and for the most part not treated but locked up and subdued. Were these people totally emotionally fit? Well, no, but being locked away was not everyone's answer. I'd like to see a book of the same subject matter about the 1990's and how treatment almost seems the opposite. Doctors seem happier to keep upping the Prozac dosage rather than lock them up for awhile. It is interesting to see how people's conceptions can change.
Rating:
Summary: excelent, superb!
Review: every chapter is thought-provoking and wonderfully written!
Rating:
Summary: a book to stay as friend
Review: to give it a star-kind-rating feels out of place - certainly susanna kaysen is excellent at describing her period of mental illness, but what is more important are her insights or inspired guesses at the nature of the phenomenon - I decided not to go to the movie because I did not wish to destroy the feeling it left, of being earnest and of hilarious laughter the way it is described in books of zen-teachers.
Rating:
Summary: Boy, Interrupted
Review: I related deeply to all the characters in the movie, which I saw several times before reading the book. Like most people interested in this material, I have (and still do) feel "crazy" and ostracized from "normal" society. I read the book in one afternoon and was struck by Susanna Kaysen's penetrating and brutally honest descriptions of both her own mind and those of the lonely, damaged girls she shared 2 years with. Susanna was in some sense lucky to have come from a well-monied family. Many people much like her suffer doing battle with invisible dragons in obscurity, unknown and forgotten, unable to contribute to the healing of our society in any meaningful way, and in many cases only because of their lesser economic status. Then again, money might have nothing to do with whether or not a damaged person can emerge from his or her own personal hell to aid others in overcoming their own. (???) The book is non-linear and switches between chapters describing Susanna's day to day existence and relationships at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA. and more reflective, analytical chapters like the one in which she explictly elaborates for the reader two "modes" of "insanity", the lethargic/catatonic and the manic, the distictions between the two being invisible to the uninitiated observer (i.e. the staff at McLean). Ms. Kaysen has a very engaging writing style and I plan to read her other books as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Disjointed and Disappointing
Review: I would first like to say that I have not seen the movie that was based on this book, and I am not judging it in relation to the movie. Girl, Interrupted is a memoir of a young woman who was committed to a mental institution after just one session with a psychologist. What I did not understand was why, after only one session, she allowed this stranger to shove her into a taxi and commit herself to an institution. It started off well, involving different people who were in the institution and things they did, but further into the book Kaysen started trying to be a psychologist herself. I did not want a psychology lesson, I wanted more information about what went on in the institution itself. She was in there for quite a while, and yet there isn't much about her life in the hospital. I can see how the movie would be a lot better since the viewers would be spared a tedious psychology lesson.
Rating:
Summary: You'd be crazy not to read this book!
Review: Knowing nothing about this book I began it with low expectations, and was continuously surprised and impressed in my reading of it. I thought it might turn into a cry for sympathy from a misunderstood teen turned adult; not so. Entertaining and as funny as it can be without being tasteless, Ms. Kaysen's novel gives the impression of telling facts like they were, not in the interest of garnering sympathy but for the purpose of promoting understanding of human characteristics which are widely diagnosed but not always understood. I found it refreshing to read so open an account of misconceptions and traits which appear to run rampant in my own generation. Entertaining enough to be read for that purpose alone, the book raises interesting questions about people's conceptions of mental illness, and the limits of "normal." I definitely recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: GIRL INTERRUPTED
Review: Very well written book. I think it's great that Susanna Kaysen wrote a book about her expience in the women's ward. It was very brave of her to share her feelings with the world.This book makes you think about who you are and how other people see you, and in my opinion any book that makes you think about any thing at all, is well written. Throughout the book you can read the charts that the nurses and doctors kept on her, I thought it was wonderful you could see what she was thinking and what the doctors thought she was thinking, it was a helpful comparison. I would recomend this book to any one who enjoys learning new and interesting things about other people.
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