Book Review Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

chillibreeze writer — Meera Guthi

Thought-provoking. Candid. Fascinating. Disturbing. Susanna Kaysen tells you the story of how she slipped into a “parallel universe”, when she was eighteen. A world where “laws of physics are suspended”, where “time may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now and then”and where “tables can be clocks, faces, flowers”. A world, which many of us might have skirted, though managed to avert – a world of the insane.

Admit it. We’ve all experienced it in one form or another, at one degree or another. Disturbing questions or random thoughts like, “I wish I would die before the exams” or “Doesn’t this pattern on the floor look like a face? Is it swirling?” However, it is when these thoughts and feelings get large and menacing and take control of you that we are most vulnerable to slip into the parallel universe. But then again, how large is really large? Who is to tell if menacing ideas are taking control of us? Who decides which universe you shall then belong to?

These questions, experiences and more are what Kaysen describes in her insightful book. She narrates the two years she spent at McLean, an expensive psychiatric hospital known for its progressive methods of treating. The hospital also housed the likes of poet Sylvia Path and singer Ray Charles.

For Kaysen, it all began with a seemingly innocent visit to the doctor one early morning, when she was more preoccupied with a pimple that was “yearning to be released”. And before she knew it she was bundled into a taxi, diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, on the way to the hospital.

In the next two years, Kaysen spends her days with other inmates – roommate Georgina; the tragic and fiery Lisa, who despite several attempts to escape always returns; Polly who had set herself on fire; Cynthia, who gets to electric shocks once a week; Daisy, a “seasonal event” with her two passions: laxatives and chicken, and others.

Kaysen does recover eventually and goes on to lead a “normal” life – whatever that might really be, as do a few other inmates. This 60s memoir also reflects on the troubled times of an era itself struggling to balance between sanity an insanity.

As you turn the pages of the book, there is no sense of hatred or resentment; it’s just a candid account that traces the life of a troubled and suicidal teenager, while setting you thinking about your own. Unlike the acclaimed ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, Kaysen is not bitter about the hospital or the nurses in particular, though there are some ineffective doctors; however she does refer to questions like who really has the right to decide whether you are sane or insane. The picture of the hospital she paints meanwhile is seen like a refuge at times and like a prison at others. Like many things in life, it just depends which way you look at it.

Kaysen’s direct and clear style literally talks to you – the beauty of the staccato language lies in its simplicity – as if she were right there narrating her story to you. It does not ask weighty questions about life, sermonizing or pontificating. Instead it divulges its contents to you in such a fantastic way, that you simply get absorbed into the narrative. The story sets you thinking, drawing your own secret parallels, and exclaiming, “Why that’s happened to me too!”

Like the narrative style, the titles of the chapters are short and direct: Fire; Freedom; Velocity vs. Viscosity; Bare Bones; Mind vs. Brain; The Shadow of the Real. It’s like stalking life’s realities, catching them red handed and exposing them in all their true self.

The title of the book is taken from a Vermeer painting, ‘Girl Interrupted at Her Music’ – where a young music student is distracted for a brief moment and looks out from the canvas; her teacher is meanwhile trying to get her to pay attention. Drawing a parallel Kaysen explains, “…as my life has been interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?” How true indeed!

And like the Vermeer still life, Kaysen paints a powerful and compelling story that makes you laugh, cry, wonder and draw your own secret parallels.

Rating: Simply Brilliant. Get a copy today.

Note: Girl Interrupted was made into a successful Hollywood movie in 1999 directed by James Mangold, starring the willowy and stunning Winona Ryder (as Kaysen), a fantastic portrayal of Lisa (that won her an Oscar for Supporting Actress) by Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg as the matron of the hospital among a stellar cast. The movie does take liberties in terms of the script, without interfering with the essence. It brilliantly and subtly brings out the story. It is as compelling as the book. Watch it.

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Meera writes for chillibreeze.

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