Girl, Interrupted (Virago) (Taschenbuch)

Girl, Interrupted (Virago) (Taschenbuch)
von Susanna Kaysen

Rezensionen:

When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant.-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe:Taschenbuch

Susanna Kaysen'sGirl, Interruptedis the autobiographical story of the author's time in a psychiatric award in 1967. Sylvia Plath was a patient at the same hospital in the early 1950s so inevitably comparisons have been made between Plath'sThe Bell Jarand Kaysen's novel--both recounting a young woman's descent into insanity. This, however, is where the similarities end--The Bell Jaris a haunting and lyrical book;Girl, Interruptedis a more hard-edged, documentary-style narrative. It has none of the beauty and poetry of Plath's prose and is more akin to Elizabeth Wurtzel'sProzac Nation, an up-to-date memoir of a young girl's struggle with depression and drugs. Both these books offer a brutal and stark image of a life of mental illness.

Kaysen's account goes further and questions the standard notions of sanity and insanity. Her plausible voice allows the reader to accept a world where time is distorted, chaos reigns and questions are left unanswered, capturing perfectly the sense of helplessness and frustration felt by these women. The book's gritty realism is also heightened by copies of the author's original medical reports lodged between the chapters.

However, it is her penetrating insights into those around her, from those cared for to the caretakers, that make "Girl, Interrupted" so potent. Lacing her narrative with a hard-edged, sardonic sting, she introduces us to a cast of characters from the outrageous Lisa to the chicken-hoarding Daisy to the Martian's girlfriend:

Daisy was a seasonal event. She came before Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas every year ... "Would anyone like to share?" the head nurse asked ... "Me! Me! Somebody who was a Martian's girlfriend and also had a little penis of her own, which she was eager to show off, raised a hand; nobody wanted to share with her.

"Girl, Interrupted" is a credible and creditable chronicle of the lives of women in the 1960s who, through the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of society, were contained and monitored for not fitting into the "norm", the mainstream.Nicola Perry

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Siehe auch folgende Artikel:

Durchgeknallt - Girl, Interrupted
The Bell Jar von Sylvia Plath
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Signet) von Joanne Greenberg
Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America - A Memoir von Elizabeth Wurtzel

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