Girl, Interrupted is a firsthand semi-diarial account of author Susanna Kaysen’s two-year stint in a Boston mental ward for wayward women in the late 1960s. The memoir, which was published in 1993, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder and Whoopi Goldberg, premiering in 1999. Consequently, the film propelled the popularity of its print counterpart. As of April 2020, over 1.5 million copies have been sold.
Personally, I only knew of Girl, Interrupted from the film and a handful of book recommendation websites before deciding to crack it open. My personal copy gathered dust on my bookshelf for eight months until I devoured it, uninterrupted, in one afternoon during quarantine last month.
My verdict? I liked it. I thought it was thought-provoking beyond most books I’ve read. I’ll explain why.
Susanna is a likeable, empathetical, snarky and utterly confused adolescent. Her story is told through an observational, firsthand perspective that encapsulates the retrospective viewpoint of the (almost) 21st century in harmony with her youthful mindset of the late 1960s. At the start of the memoir, I felt immensely sorry for Susanna and her circumstances. She initially exuded the position of a tragically misunderstood woman who winds up in the loony bin but does belong there. Quickly, my outlook on Susanna in this regard deteriorated, as some of her abnormal tendencies became apparent upon reading further.
Before Kaysen’s admittance to McLean Hospital, known simply as “McLean,” she’d slept with her high school English teacher and committed a half-hearted suicide attempt. Whether she was serious about taking her life or not, her promiscuity and self-harming behavior was enough reason for Kaysen to be put away. Not to mention, Kaysen expressed zero interest in pursuing higher education, which was unacceptable in an environment where young women in her caliber of society were expected to attend Ivy League universities. Kaysen’s own father was an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and helped resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not attending college was not an option for her.
After one short sit-down with a psychiatrist to discuss her issues, Kaysen was whisked away in a taxi to McLean, where she never felt another taste of freedom for nearly two years. From that point on, Kaysen’s story is carefully documented and supported by medical records belonging to McLean. The records, which she acquired some 25 years later, are inserted throughout the book in between chapters to illustrate the progression, or regression, of her diagnosis, “borderline personality disorder,” up until her discharge on January 3, 1969.
The story is written in small, digestible vignettes that leave little room for confusion or misinterpretation. Chapters are short. Sentences are short. Word choice is straightforward and carefully constructed. Some characters are transient while others remain key players throughout the novel. It is mentioned that Sylvia Plath was a “notable alumna” of McLean as well.
In contrast to the funny, memorable anecdotes sprinkled throughout the memoir, Kaysen equally annunciates the harsh, glum reality of living inside the confines of a mental institution. She recalls the mish mash of mental disorders coexisting under one roof, how certain personalities would clash amongst each other, and how freedom was a foreign concept to the patients in comparison to the nurses their same age who worked in the ward. And, of course, Kaysen vividly recounts sitting around the black-and-white television for hours with the other patients consuming news regarding the Vietnam War and other troubling world events.
I walked away from Girl, Interuppted feeling slightly unsettled, as it served as an eye-opening revelation of the treatment and stigma surrounding mental disorders in women in the 1960s. While Kaysen indisputably possessed some form of a “character disorder,” some of her inappropriate antics she details in her memoir would be far from mental institution-worthy behavior in the present day. There were several isolated moments where I wished Kaysen’s recount was fictional as the content was so sad, so strange and so sedentary. The overall tone made me as a reader feel trapped, either trapped inside McLean, or trapped in the unchanging atmosphere outside McLean once Kaysen exits the hospital for good.
If you’ve previously read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (one of my all-time favorites), I can see why Girl, Interrupted would be recommended reading as well. In fact, Sylvia Plath’s novel is what segued me into reading Girl, Interrupted. As for an uplifting, coming-of-age story, Girl Interrupted is not explicitly so. If you’re interested in reading firsthand insight regarding mental health treatment in a bygone era, Girl, Interrupted should be at the top of your reading list.
