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

Details

ISBN13: 9780349019598
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 192
Edition:
Publication Date: 25 Feb 2025
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 196(H)x126(L)x16(W)157
Weight (gm): 157

Author Biography

Susanna Kaysen (1948) was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she still lives. She has written two novels, ASA, AS I KNEW HIM and FAR AFIELD. While working on the latter, memories of her two year stay at McLean's Psychiatric Hospital began to emerge. With the help of a lawyer she obtained her 350 page file from the hospital. GIRL, INTERRUPTED followed.

Reviews

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 -- Scarlett Curtis
Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . A compelling and heartbreaking story * New York Times Book Review *
A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir * The Times *
Memorable and stirring . . . Fascinating. A powerful examination not only of Kaysen's own imperfections but of those of the system that diagnosed her * Vogue *
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 *
Intelligent and painful * Guardian *
Girl, Interrupted is superb, poignant and more powerful for its lack of romantic inflation, whining, or self-congratulation * Scotland on Sunday *