Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.
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. Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, this bestselling memoir is a sharply vivid portrait of Susanna’s fellow patients, the kaleidoscopically shifting world of the late sixties, and how sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.
‘Girl, Interrupted is a beautiful, complex story that truly led the way on opening up a new, brave, nuanced approach to talking about women’s mental health. An intense and personal story that taps into a universal truth about how the world responds to complicated young women’ SCARLETT CURTIS
‘Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘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
‘A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Memorable and stirring’ VOGUE
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. Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, this bestselling memoir is a sharply vivid portrait of Susanna’s fellow patients, the kaleidoscopically shifting world of the late sixties, and how sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.
‘Girl, Interrupted is a beautiful, complex story that truly led the way on opening up a new, brave, nuanced approach to talking about women’s mental health. An intense and personal story that taps into a universal truth about how the world responds to complicated young women’ SCARLETT CURTIS
‘Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘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
‘A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Memorable and stirring’ VOGUE
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Reviews
Intelligent and painful
Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim
Girl, Interrupted is superb, poignant and more powerful for its lack of romantic inflation, whining, or self-congratulation
Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story
A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir
Memorable and stirring . . . Fascinating. A powerful examination not only of Kaysen's own imperfections but of those of the system that diagnosed her
Girl, Interrupted is a beautiful, complex story that truly led the way on opening up a new, brave, nuanced approach to talking about women's mental health. It is an intense and personal story that taps into a universal truth about how the world responds to complicated young women
