while i was reading Wintering, i had a few conversations about books about young women in mental institutions. i think i read The Bell Jar once, but i read this book a few times, drawn to the non-linear narrative with a confessional tone, quirky humor, and heavy intimacy. Kaysen spent almost two years in McLean Hospital in her late teens and wrote this memoir over twenty years later. that distance extracts a lot of the angst and melodrama that might be expected.

related: The Mad Poets Society