Prozac Nation (Movie Tie-In) by Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Book Reviews of Prozac Nation (Movie Tie-In)
Book Review: love/hate it
Summary: 3 Stars
It is difficult to say whether this is a great book or a disaster. Some paragraphs are beautiful, while others lead the reader into a big confusing wad of meaningless words. It think Wurtzel tried too hard to be poetic and forgot to make sense in many scenes. Furthermore, the route of her symptoms, her childhood background, her fear of abandoment, the way she associates with people, etc. leads me personally to believe that she was suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder which would explain a LOT more of her behavior than depression ever could, and depression often coincides with BPD. Whatever the case, it is a good read, partly, but if you are reading it solely with the purpose to learn about depression this is most likely not the best work of art to find it in.Book Review: Interminable, Sluggish, and Frustrating...
Summary: 2 Stars
When i finished Prozac Nation it felt as if i had been reading a book the size of a webster's dictionary and the excrutiating mental pain of it all was over, finally over. The day i finally got to close that book was nothing less than a sigh of relief.
This is what i thought:
1. I thought it took her an awfully long time to get to the action. She, in my opinion, spent forever going through her family structure. Her relationship with her mother, her relationship with her father. The drama and arguments and abadonment and pain, pain, pain. She elaborated on it to the point where it was whittled down to a trivial matter in which it seemed she was simply whining about, exaggerating and droning.
2. Her dialogue bothered me. Most people who write memoirs (marya hornbacher for instance) do not directly quote people since, especially since these books are written in retrospect, with only the author's memory as a source, it's almost impossible to remember every word of every person you have ever met. Thus, i wasn't convinced these interactions with other people were really genuine. Not only that, but the dialogue was dramatic and cliche and sappy so much so that you could almost hear the classical background music. It was actually pretty embarrassing.
3. She, like she did in Bitch, used far too many references.Some of what she alludes to are well-known movies and books but most of them aren't. She uses them toward the beginning incessantly, a sad attempt at comparing them to her depression as though it would make it any more vivid.It didn't. In fact, it required so much stopping and starting that i got a headache and mostly skipped those pages where i was sure she simply wanted to showcase her oh-so-overwhelming knowledge of art and literature and blah blah blah. I took it as a manifestation of the fact that she didnt have the ability to use vivid adjectives and prose to illustrate various situations, but that she was name-dropping for no reason...
4. It's frustrating as all hell. She drones on and on and on about how miserable she is, how she just wants to end it all, but how she "doesn't have the energy". She falls in and out and in and out of these "black wave" phases that simply make you think, rather calously, "here we go again" instead of sympathizing with her at all. You wait and wait for a culmination of a pseudo-suspensful build-up (a suicide attempt, a huge breakdown) that never really happens. When she does, i guess, get down to her ultimate low, she relieves us only with some random suicide attempt in the bathroom of her therapist's office that is, as horrible as it sounds, quite disappointing. The teeter-totter cycle of frustration that she puts the reader through is not at all worth would i would describe as an inept ending. But still, you maybe find yourself reading on, in hopes of some Great Big Finish Off that will never come.
5. Her character, quite frankly, makes you sick. It's not just that is a whiney,shallow, narcissistic brat--that is all very true--but it just seems like the entire book is a haughty manifestation of a woman who, despite all of the things she does to intentionally screw up her life, gets away with it all unscathed. She is a bitch to her mother and her friends but still they support and continue to love her in the end, she neevr does any of her work at Harvard but still she manages to graduate, she is supposedly so low-class, so poor, but still she can afford trips to Dallas and Rhode Island and London and NYC and back to Cambridge. It is almost impossible to feel sorry for, or relate to this woman.
6. While there are many problems with this book, i do still think that there are alot of profound lessons about life that this book brings to light: The fact that "when you feel everything intensely, you ultimately feel nothing at all, because everything registers at the same decibel." How the little, mundane things are what keep people wanting to live, how a nation can somehow come to accept the notion of a pill as an answer to every emotional adversity, how madness is "too glamorous a word to convey what happens to people who are loosing their mind"...all of these theories she posed in which i found very insightful and almost beautiful.
I also think Wurtzel is a good, solid writer who has the ability to create something brutally honest and eloquent. This book, unfortunately, was not one of them...
Book Review: Hmmm....
Summary: 2 Stars
I suffer from very serious depression. I have been in and out of hospitals more times than I can count over the past 7 years, made multiple suicide attempts, have cut up my body so badly that transfusions were needed, taken numerous overdoses, and have been turned on by family and friends many times. I also am a graduate of an Ivy League school, and I have lived in several large cities around the U.S. My sister also suffers from depression which was diagnosed at a younger age than I was diagnosed -- she was hospitalized for the first time at age 8 and has been essentially unresponsive to meds and ECT. I have known many people who suffer from mental illness of varying types and degrees -- through my own experience with depression, some friends, and research that I have directed. So, I feel that I am qualified to say that I find this book very annoying and the author to be incredibly whiny and self-absorbed. This is not a pure criticism, as I know that I acted similarly at times, like most people with depression do. At times, we whine and think only of ourselves because we feel so miserable and, for some, because we want help so badly. This makes sense because this is a wretched and, without finding appropriate meds and/or therapy, sadly intractable. Yet I believe that the author went to incredible extremes with these characteristics, as well as with her self-sabotaging, melodrama, and tendency to malinger. I have never known or heard of anyone going to such lengths to avoid getting better, and I really do not consider her any sort of example of what the typical person with severe depression suffers with day to day. Her tendencies seem much more similar to those of some sort of personality disorder (perhaps borderline) or of a bipolar II or bipolar spectrum disorder (in which case the usual anti-depressants, such as SSRIs, might only worsen her symptoms). I read this book during one of my worst periods of depression, and it was a huge turn off. Perhaps it was the way that it was written, but I had no empathy towards the author and her failed "attempts" to overcome her struggles. I have a very hard time thinking that anyone would want to read this book for comfort, englightenment about depression, or hope -- in contrast, I can only imagine recommending it to someone who wants to linger in their miserable state, as did Wurtzel. I found Prozac Diary (by Lauren Slater) to be much more interesting, insightful, comforting, and hopeful. And I recommend that book because there is hope out there. After many long years, I found a medication that worked and told myself that I needed to get myself back together. I did, and it is still working -- I have come further than I ever expected. Good luck to you all.Book Review: Whine, whine, whine
Summary: 2 Stars
Most truly substantial memoirs end in a way that leads you to believe the writer has had amazing insights concerning their lives. The writer looks back at what kind of person they are, and who they have become and realized the growth they have underwent. Elizabeth Wurtzel had no revelations of these by the end of the book. She really learned very little, and had no important insights. A good memoir, in my view, does not have have a whiny writer. They do not moan and pout throughout the book. This book was buried in self-indulgent sorrow.
In the afterword of the book Elizabeth Wurtzel writes she is happy to have written the book to help teenagers that may be experiencing depression feel someone understands and has went through the same feelings. This concept makes me feel physically ill. To think that this book is out there for teenagers to read and help them wallow in their depression is horrible! If this book had had a lesson learned about dealing and overcoming depression in any way, besides taking Prozac, I would have enjoyed this memoir. The entire book is truly about a spoiled girl, so self-centered that she can not truly grow as a person to be admired in the way she seems to think she should.
The moral of the book for me is to look inside yourself and realize your depression that was not caused by a chemical imbalance, or a hard life, or really any real hardships in life, but rather by your personal satisfaction in remaining depressed. She enjoyed being depressed because it gave her the attention she always wanted, (and still obviously does). My advice to Elizabeth Wurtzel is to go volunteer at a children's cnacer wing, or simply go to any welfare office and talk to some of the teenagers. See what true hardships these teenagers go through on a daily basis, and how they learn to cope. Learn some TRUE empathy for others, and it will put your PERSPECTIVE all in order for you.
If you are considering reading this book, do not do it unless you want to listen to someone whine about their depressive way of seeing things.
Book Review: Read this book knowing that it has nothing to do with dealing with depression
Summary: 2 Stars
If this "book" was written by Wurtzel as a tool to help her find the end of the tunnel then there might some merit to that. But I feel that the depressed public of America should have been spared the sales pitch that someone thought up which brought about the publishing of this steaming pile of self-pity. I will admit that I, being a general member of the public, am ignorant of much and in this knowledge I will read reviews and make purchases based on these works of marketing. Those behind the scam that brought this collection of words to the public as an insightful work of prose should be more than ashamed of each dollar they stole from the public asking for a worthy look at the stain of depression so widespread today. Perhaps her mother figured that she deserved some recompense for the torturous years of enabling she put herself through. Perhaps this is all really fictional, which could help smooth out a few of the inconstancies, and someone's idea of literature. If some depressed persons in reading this might achieve a new perspective of themselves and come to question if they might be this miserable and worthless of a drain on those around them some good may yet come of it.
Those of us, though, who have actually had to find our own way through life, afford our own educations, struggle to find an exit from depression other than taking whatever pills the doctor prescribes this week, know full well that writing a book for people suffering depression is not a cause worth tackling because reason and solutions are things they will not be capable of seeing until they have found them of their own accord.
Let me ask, which came first, the drugs or the depression? Which is really leading the race, the spread of depression or the proliferation of chemical "solutions" for our slumps? This book does not address these sorts of questions. The book is instead a diary reformatted into a story package. My second star is in hope that some might find something of worth on this book's pages.