Susanna Kaysen (1948) was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she still lives. She has written two novels, ASA, AS I KNEW HIM and FAR AFIELD. While working on the latter, memories of her two year stay at McLean's Psychiatric Hospital began to emerge. With the help of a lawyer she obtained her 350 page file from the hospital. GIRL, INTERRUPTED followed.

'Poignant, honest and triumphantly funny . . . Acompelling and heartbreaking story' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'Girl, Interrupted is a beautiful, complex story that truly led the way on opening up a new, brave, nuanced approach to talking about women's mental health' SCARLETT CURTIS'Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim' TIMESometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazyIn 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 to be treated for depression. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in the psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, Anne Sexton and Ray Charles. 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.'A cool, elegant and unexpectedly funny memoir' GUARDIAN'Memorable and stirring . . . A powerful examination not only of Kaysen's own imperfections but of those of the system that diagnosed her' VOGUE