Author: Susanna Kaysen
ISBN: 0679746048
Pages: 192
Rating: 3 1/2 stars
This book is the accounting of the two year stay at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts by the author, Susanna Kaysen, after she suffers a mental breakdown at the age of 18. And, yes, there is a movie rendering of the book with a young Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder. I have it somewhere in my large DVD collection. The one thing I liked so much about this book was the copies of the official documents of her stay at McLean. I felt it lent an air of credibility to a book that could be considered fiction at times. At times, the book seemed to be too disjointed. Yes, it covered a span of time that was relatively short (18 months or so), but the chapters covered the people and times during the hospitalization in no particular order, or so it seemed to me. Maybe it was purposefully, but the editor could have put them in chronological order at least. The most heart wrenching part of it was the ending: seeing how hard it is to go from a hospitalized seting back to the real world and the stigmatism that a mental illness has even now 40 years after the events happened.
I enjoyed the film considerably more than the book, but it was certainly worth a read all the same! I liked the addition of the documents, too. And also felt the content would have flowed better if it had been on chronological order.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by! I have yet to find the movie in my collection.
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