By: Ecila

Ecila — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:09:37 +0000

Now I Understand Mental Health Before I read this book, I bought it for a friend as a birthday gift. About two, three years later, I finally decide to pick it up and read it myself. It was about October when I started and I finished it sometime before December. There was one line in the book that really changed my life. It was Craig was first checked into the hospital and when he’s having a discussion with Humble. Humble says something along the lines of how he’s afraid of living and not dying. When I read that I really understood what it’s like to have a mental health disorder.The way this book was written can resemble a memoir because Vizzini wrote this book after he was released from a hospital himself. And that’s what makes it more realistic for the reader. As a young adult myself who is still in school, active in various extra curriculars, and dealing with relationships, this book is very relatable and shockingly real. This book is a great read for that reason. If you know someone who has a mental health disorder, whether it be depression, DID, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, you would greatly benefit from this book because you take the time to step inside their mind.

By: John Kwok

John Kwok — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:00:58 +0000

A Memorable Novel On Clinical Depression Which Will Interest Adults Too When I moved back to New York City a decade ago, I was drawn immediately to the pages of the free alternative weekly “The New York Press”. Why? Back then it had a terrific stable of eloquent columnists, ranging from Jonathan Ames and Melissa de la Cruz to fellow Brunonian Amy Sohn. But I thought the most remarkable person writing for them was a young high school student, Ned Vizzini, who would soon become a fellow alumnus of our prestigious New York City public high school, Stuyvesant High School, which is of course best known for its Nobel Prize-winning alumni, other distinguished scientists, doctors, engineers and lawyers, legendary Hollywood movie stars like James Cagney and Tim Robbins, and a certain former member of its faculty, one bestselling memoirist by the name of Frank McCourt. Although I haven’t been following his subsequent career as diligently as I should, I was quite impressed back then with Vizzini’s crisp, clear prose, and fine ear for clever dialogue. All of these are amply present in his latest novel for adolescent kids, “Its Kind Of A Funny Story”, which I think will interest many adults too.Vizzini offers an eloquent, memorable fictional description of teenage clinical depression in his latest novel; one which is the most honest, and truly – on occasion – humorous accounts I have come across. It is also one firmly rooted in reality, since he had suffered from clinical depression too, shortly before writing this novel. Craig Gilner is a new student at a prestigious New York City high school which is a fictionalized, business-oriented version of Stuyvesant. One night he begins thinking of suicide, and ultimately checks himself into the emergency room of his Brooklyn neighborhood hospital. It’s the start of an engrossing – and as I have noted before, an occasionally hilarious – journey through the hospital’s adult mental ward, where he soon encounters recovering drug addicts and people with multiple personality disorders. Craig does his best trying to retain his sanity while dealing with his fellow patients, the hospital’s staff of superb doctors, nurses and other medical attendants, his family, and his small circle of high school buddies. You will find yourself smiling, perhaps laughing, as you read Craig’s encounters, which will, of course, end on a triumphant note. Having established himself as one of our finest writers of adolescent fiction, I am truly looking forward to the time when Ned Vizzini joins the ranks of our best adult fiction writers too.

Comments on: It’s Kind of a Funny Story

By: Ecila

By: John Kwok