Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
The bestselling book that inspired the cult classic film, Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.
"Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim" TIME
"Intelligent and painful" Guardian
"Poignant, astonishing memoir" New York Times
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 to be treated for depression. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles.
A clear-sighted, unflinching work that provokes questions about our definitions of sane and insane, Kaysen's extraordinary memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers.
Product Details
About Susanna Kaysen
Reviews for Girl, Interrupted
Scarlett Curtis Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story
New York Times Book Review
A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir
The Times
Memorable and stirring . . . Fascinating. A powerful examination not only of Kaysen's own imperfections but of those of the system that diagnosed her
Vogue
Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim
Time
Intelligent and painful
Guardian
Girl, Interrupted is superb, poignant and more powerful for its lack of romantic inflation, whining, or self-congratulation
Scotland on Sunday