Rating:★★★☆☆
Paperback: 362 pages
Pub. Date: April 2002
Tags: memoir, mental health, national bestseller
Synopsis: Full of promise is how anyone would have described Elizabeth Wurtzel at age ten, a bright-eyed little girl who painted, wrote stories, and excelled in every way. By twelve she was cutting her legs in the girls' bathroom and listening to scratchy recordings of the Velvet Underground. College was marked by a series of breakdowns, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations before she was finally given Prozac in combination with other psychoactive drugs, all of which have worked sporadically as Elizabeth's mood swings rise and fall like the lines of a sad ballad. This memoir, both harrowing and hilarious, gives voice to the high incidence of depression - especially among America's youth.
Prozac Nation is a collective cry for help, a generational status report on today's young people, who have come of age fully entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS. "This private world of loony bins and weird people which I always felt I occupied and hid in," writes Elizabeth, "had suddenly turned inside out so that it seemed like this was one big Prozac Nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out." Writing with a vengeance (Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, and Dorothy Parker all rolled into one), Elizabeth Wurtzel will not go gentle into that good night. She wants off medication, she wants a family, and most definitely, a life worth living. - B&N
January 12, 2008
|
"[I] stopped wanting to want anything at all anymore, knowing for sure that I could never have it, that I'd been expelled from that place where possibility existed."
- Chapter Three, Pg. 80
|
Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel does an excellent job at showing what it's like to live inside her head to many that still don't fully understand the depressive mind. It is a good book to hand over to someone to explain your feelings, however I don't think that it is a mind-altering book that would make anyone change their opinions on the subject either way.
There are a lot of passages where Wurtzel came off as difficult, whiny, and self-centered which made me frustrated and annoyed at her. (Her need for Prozac one-upmanship seriously made me want to tell her to STFU and STFD.) However, this anger and frustration is the whole point of the book, which is why I can let this annoyance pass. It shows you how it feels to deal with an actual depressive.
Prozac Nation reminded me of a time when I was taken over by my own black wave. There were parts in the book where I found myself skimming because they were difficult to read through, not because of incomprehensible narration, but on a personal level it triggered emotions that I thought I left behind.
I am aware that there was some controversy surrounding the legitimacy of this book, but I could really care less. Honest or not, it felt real enough for me to even care if she was sincere. Although it is worth reading, it is definitely not one that I would want to read again. And as for the movie...I think I'll pass.
|
