Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen.

2/5 stars.

This book was entirely different from what I assumed it would be. I thought it would tell all about her 18 months in a psychiatric hospital, yet she only shared glimpses of what it was like there.

Other parts in the book she recalled disturbed me, esp the wrist banging and trying to see if she had bones in her hand. I was never a fan of reading about others self mutilation, it gives me the chills...

"I turned my hand over quickly. The back of it wasn't much better. My veins bulged--maybe because it was such a hot day-- and the skin around my knuckles was wrinkly and loose. ...........skipping ahead.........Or perhaps those weren't bones but tendons? I poked one, it was resilient, so probably it was a tendon. Underneath, though, were bones. At least I hoped so.

I poked deeper, to feel the bones. They were hard to find. Knucklebones were easy, but I wanted to find the hand bones, the long ones going from my wrists to my fingers.

I started getting worried. Where were my bones? I put my hand in my mouth and bit it, to see if I crunched down on something hard. Everything slid away from me. There were nerves, there were blood vessels; there were tendons. All these things were slippery and elusive.

"Damn," I said."

There were tons of lines I loved in this book. Here are some of the parts I loved:

When she is explaining her wrist banging:

"I was like an anchorite with a hair shirt. Part of the point was that nobody knew about my suffering. If people knew and admired--or abominated--me, something important would be lost."

"I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I as in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself ("counteract feelings of 'numbness'."

This book is also a movie with Winona Ryder, Brittany Murphy, and Angelina Jolie. I will watch the movie and see if its better than the book.

I know this post sucked, I don't have much to say about the book, except it didn't wow me; yet it did disturb me in tons of parts. I guess that is something.