Girl Interrupted .
The non-fiction I have chosen to write about that had a very powerful impact on me is "Girl Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen.
I know I really like a book when I find myself always thinking about it. I was drawn to Girl Interrupted and whatever room I left it in. Set in a hospital in 1967, it is told by 18-year-old Susanna, who is living under the fragile dome of depression and spending her days in McLean Hospital near Boston. We see the hospital and its colorful occupants through her eyes, while trying to understand her mental illness.
Girl, Interrupted leaves you wondering what exactly Susanna Kaysen makes of her past. Clearly she looks back on it with a sense of surprise, almost wondering whether her memories really belong to her. Her memoir is a series of recollections and reflections on her time in mental hospital. She considers how she got there, and whether she belonged there. Each short chapter focuses on an aspect of her experience, and these are arranged in chronological order, so as to tell her story of the people she met and the treatment she received. I think the book was wonderfully descriptive of her mental state, and found myself relating to a lot of what was said.
The writer managed to achieve this effect on me by using quite a number of techniques. The first chapter is called "Toward a Topography of the Parallel Universe" and all her chapters are given titles. You begin to realize that she is going to explain what she means by this title and it gives you the feeling that she is looking toward a strange and new place. She says that a lot of people ask how she got into such a place and she replies "it is easy to slip into a parallel universe." She talks about her room mate Georgina and why she was in there too, also says "And who can resist an opening?" using a rhetorical question to show how we can all be a little curious when something is unopened and that when something in our membrane is damaged or torn until an opening exists that we can help but want to go through that opening.