Girl, Interrupted

This book captures the raw reality of a  psychiatric hospital and the seventeen months the author spent inside of one.  The patients she shares the floor with are equally memorable and vividly described. 

I can’t begin to explain the horror and razor-edged perception Kaysen’s memoir encompasses. It is so unsettling that the reader may question his or her sanity. As one librarian pointed out, ''the author captures the experience of madness, sharp and touched with a feeling of surrealism that pulls the reader into her world, where the line between sanity and madness becomes murky.'' (Lisa J. Cochenet, Rhinelander Dist. Lib., Wisconsin).

I found this memoir powerfully moving because it changed my outlook on sanity, mental illness and recovery.  As Kaysen was descending blindly into madness, she was fully aware of her own dilemma and found herself trying to prevent it. As a result, I wondered "what is 'insanity'?", and found myself asking this question this after finishing this book. The unsettling feeling it instilled lingered long after  I finished the last page. 
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- written by Tyger Jackson, grade 12, March 2017