Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: 10 reasons for YOU to read Prozac Nation
Review: Read this book if you:

1. know this isn't it.
2. find the answers in music.
3. hate and love yourself more than anyone.
4. normally feel abnormal.
5. are uncertainly enjoyable to others.
6. regularly feel your insides wretch.
7. think life and death resemble a coin flip.
8. need to learn control
9. can't articulate your emotional vomit
10. want to know someone else for a change.


Rating:
Summary: A voice for the countless people who suffer in silence...
Review: Well written. I just really loved reading this book because the author shares the overwhelming emotions ... every bit of frustration and hopelessness the depression caused her... which is something that many of us who suffer from clinical depression can relate to. At least, I can.

As Elizabeth Wurtzel is telling her personal story, she details the history of the depression in her life she suffered from since childhood, the things she thought may have contributed to it, and, all the ways she unsuccessfully tried to deal with it through the years. It was ruining her education, her relationships, her career and basically her life. As she grew worse in her 20's she eventually started being hospitalized for it and when she couldn't handle her life anymore she overdosed.

Finally, she was put on a medication which was still quite new at the time, which was Prozac, and it worked for her. She called it "the miracle that saved her life." However, this isnt a book promoting a medication. Its a true-life story that openly tells of her suffering but she even goes beyond her own story ... speaking of so many things in our lives that affect us... how many of us have turned to medications as a last resort... and how we came to be a "Prozac Nation."

Very interesting reading.

Rating:
Summary: Of course she's whiny and self-indulgent - She's depressed!
Review: If you can force yourself to see beyond the "spoiled brat" - the whiner moaning about how black life is, never mind that she studied in Harvard, writes for Rolling Stone even before she graduated, is on the New Yorker's payroll - you will see that Elizabeth really was only out to portray the life and thoughts of a true depressive. The best part for me was when, after her suicide attempt, Ellie realized that she needed to live if only for ice cream.

Despite the theme of the book, Elizabeth manages to slip in some humorous moments and it makes the book easier to read.

The oddest thing, though, was the editing of the book. There were two words that were missing in the whole book, I forgot now which words those were.



Rating:
Summary: Living through the hell of depression...
Review: This well-written memoir chronicles the teenage and college years of Elizabeth Wurtzel's life, which she spends primarily in a funk of deep, unshakeable depression. If you have not felt this kind of depression before (and I haven't), it is easy to get impatient with the author midway through the book. She seems to have everything that many of us want: a burgeoning career as a feature writer for newspapers and major magazines like Rolling Stone (and this is while she is still in college, remember); a Harvard education that is seemingly entirely scholarship-funded; an endless supply of endlessly patient friends. So why is she constantly whining and self-obsessed, constantly full of unjustified pain? Even her tragedies are minor -- a distant father, a failed short-term relationship. Wurtzel herself even comes out of her funk from time to time to wonder, "Why am I so depressed? What do I have to feel bad about?"

It is this impatience with the narrator that is the real brilliance of the book, and as we find out in the last chapter, Wurtzel has deliberately portrayed herself exactly as she felt, so that we, the readers, can learn exactly what it's like to be severely depressed. And we do, believe me.

By the end of the book, we have been through the wringer with Wurtzel, and we are glad to see her find salvation in drugs (although she is careful to explain that while anti-depressants have saved lives, they are in danger of being over-prescribed for the most minor cases of the blues). So yes, this book is uncomfortable to read, and we may occasionally want to yell at Wurtzel to snap out of it already, but when it is done, we know just what hell she went thorugh -- because we went through it with her.