Book 3: Girl, Interrupted

The last book that I read was Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen; it is another memoir, like Prozac Nation. The title refers to one of Vermeer's paintings, Girl Interrupted at her Music. Kaysen's memoir takes place during the 1960s, when she voluntarily signed herself into a mental hospital after attempting suicide at 18 years old. The book has pages of her actual file, with some lines blacked out, inserted into to the chapters. Readers follow Kaysen's reflection of being a patient in a psychiatric hospital during the 60s, and learning to accept her diagnosis: borderline personality disorder. She makes friends in the institution, and questions "normal." After two years, a marriage proposal sets Kaysen free from the mental hospital, but it limits her freedom.