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
Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story
A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir
Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim
Intelligent and painful
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 superb, poignant and more powerful for its lack of romantic inflation, whining, or self-congratulation
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
