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. She spent most of the next two years in the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital 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...
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. ...
Dinah Sachs and Asa Thayer have had a love affair, conducted in afternoons stolen from the office of the magazine where they work. But now that the affair is over, Dinah, in an act of lingering passion, invents a narrative of Asa's youth, imagining the events that shaped the 'happy, handsome man' who, in her words, 'was born to stomp on my heart.' Witty and sexy, funny and immediate, Asa, as I Knew Him is a seductive dialogue between love and memory, obsession and illusion.
Dinah Sachs and Asa Thayer have had a love affair, conducted in afternoons stolen from the office of the magazine where they work. But now that the af...
Susanna Kaysen, who wrote about her teenage depression in the bestseller Girl, Interrupted, now takes on another taboo: her vagina which suddenly and inexplicably starts to hurt. And neither Kaysen s cheery gynecologist, nor her internist, nor a laconic vulvologist has the cure. An alternative health nurse suggests direct application of tea, baking soda, and boric acid. Others recommend novocaine, oatmeal, bio-feedback, and anti-depressants. Nothing works. As sex becomes more and more painful, Kaysen s relationship with her boyfriend disintegrates and she turns to her best friends, her...
Susanna Kaysen, who wrote about her teenage depression in the bestseller Girl, Interrupted, now takes on another taboo: her vagina which sudden...
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital to be treated for depression. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles. An unflinching work that asks questions about our definitions of sane and insane, Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers.
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital to be t...
"It was probably because I was so often taken away from Cambridge when I was young that I loved it as much as I did . . ."
London, Florence, Athens: Susanna, a precocious young girl growing up in 1950s Cambridge, would rather be home than in any of these places. Uprooted from the streets around Harvard Square, she feels lost and excluded in all the far-flung cities to which her father's career takes the family. She always comes home with relief--but soon enough wonders if outsiderness may be her permanent condition. Written with a sharp eye for the...
"It was probably because I was so often taken away from Cambridge when I was young that I loved it as much as I did . . ."
