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. She spent most of the next two years in the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.

Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

This is the kind of reading that I preferred to read when I was younger. The writing is spare and terse, but there is enough thought-provoking information and poetic presentation to interest the reader. The subject material is perplexing. It makes you think about a lot of the issues of mental illnesses.

This has been mailed to raralovestoread of Louisiana who is the next person on the ABC Authors Bookring --Authors whose last name begins with a "K".

I have chosen this book from iwillrejoice's ABC Authors Book Rings - US version - Letter K. Thanks for sharing! 

This is the second time I've read this book. I find it a fascinating look at the author's experiences in a psychiatric hospital. I must say that the movie was also interesting, though if I remember correctly it didn't exactly follow what actually happened.

This book was placed in the Little Free Library.