Girl, Interrupted
A Memoir

Name: Girl, Interrupted
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Author: Susanna Kaysen
ISBN: 9798217406067

Author: Susanna Kaysen

Narrator: Susanna Kaysen

Unabridged: 3 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Random House Audio

Published: 04/28/2026

Categories: Nonfiction, Psychology, Mental Health, Social Science, Women's Studies

Synopsis

30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 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. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review).

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties.

Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

About Susanna Kaysen

Susanna Kaysen is the nationally bestselling author of the novels Asa, As I Knew Him and Far Afield and the memoirs Girl, Interrupted and The Camera My Mother Gave Me. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Erin on February 05, 2008

have you ever spent any time in a psychiatric hospital? yeah, well, i don't recommend it. i was a patient for a total of 2 and a half days, and it was one of the best and worst experiences of my life. i liked this book because i was able to relate to some of her feelings. when i went in, it was beca......more

Goodreads review by emma on January 12, 2024

I can always tell I really, truly liked a book, really felt it and enjoyed it, when one of two things occurs: 1) I spontaneously tear up at the ending. 2) I immediately need to own a hardcover copy but hardcovers are hard to find so I do the unthinkable: Check eBay. I did both of these things as soon a......more

Goodreads review by Max on August 06, 2022

I have an urge to wrongly self diagnose myself with BPD......more

Goodreads review by persephone ☾ on February 24, 2022

liking this book is peak hot but also very much mentally-ill girl energy......more

Goodreads review by Paul on August 19, 2016

Everything is made of language. In the morning you hear those damned birdies tweedlydee tweedlydoo to each other or some damned cats meowing but that’s not language. It may be communication but it has no grammar and it can only describe the here and now (the hear and know). The birdies are tweebing......more

Quotes

"Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny ... [a] compelling and heartbreaking story." —The New York Times Book Review

"In piercing vignettes shadowed with humor [Kaysen] brings to life the routine of the ward and its patients.... Kaysen's meditations on young women and madness form a trenchant counterpoint to the copies of her medical records that are woven into the text." —The New Yorker

"An eloquent and unexpectedly funny memoir." —Vanity Fair

''Memorable and stirring ... fascinating. A powerful examination not only of Kaysen's own imperfections but of those of the system that diagnosed her." —Vogue

"Tough-minded ... darkly comic ... written with indelible clarity." —Newsweek

"[A]n account of a disturbed girl's unwilling passage into womanhood ... and here is the girl, looking into our faces with urgent eyes." —Washington Post Book World

"At turns wry, sardonic, witty ... an unusual glimpse of a young woman's experience with insanity. Kaysen presents a meaningful analysis of the dual and contradictory nature of psychiatric hospitalization as both refuge and prison." —San Francisco Chronicle

Awards

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults