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A review by bitinglime
Teen Angst? Naaah...: A Quasi-Autobiography by Ned Vizzini
5.0
This was a pretty great "Quasi-autobiography." This entire book is basically little vignettes from author Ned Vizzini's teenage years. Now, I actually read It's Kind of a Funny Story from him a while back and loved it, and that's when I also learned of Vizzini's suicide. It actually became a topic of discussion at a book club I went to who read Teen Angst this month, the question being something along the lines of "could you tell if he was suffering from depression when he wrote this?" This book has nothing really to do with Vizzini's mental health, but such a question to ask is obsolete anyway. Most of the time, you can't tell if someone is suffering. I have bouts of depression and even hallucinate from time to time (I'm diagnosed as having high-functioning Schizoaffective Disorder), but I have been known to hide it out of embarrassment - which is dangerous, and I don't recommend it. There are so many news stories of suicides where the people closest to the victims had no idea the victim was suffering. If you feel anxious or depressed, please talk to someone about it, it could save your life. Now, about the book itself.
The stuff that Vizzini went through in his teenage years reminded me of my own childhood. And he writes about it so well. I remember fighting with my brother over playing with the Nintendo at my grandmother's house, but for some reason his fight with his brother had me laughing out loud. Or how he went to summer camp at a church recreation center. I went to a Christian camp as well. Seriously, I related to most of his life-snippets. Although I never tried recreational drugs until I was much older, I'm glad that I read this book at a time where that still managed to be somewhere in my past to look back on.
There is a sort of Afterword written years after this book was written. Vizzini states that he went to a mental health facility and wrote It's Kind of a Funny Story after that. The book I have might be a little outdated because it still gives URLs to his website, which is no longer running. It also doesn't say anywhere what happened to him. To be fair though, I don't think it even mentioned it in It's Kind of a Funny Story either. I think I actually found out about his suicide after reading that book. I liked it so much I wanted to find others he had written. I was sad when I found out he had died a year before I read It's Kind of a Funny Story.
The stuff that Vizzini went through in his teenage years reminded me of my own childhood. And he writes about it so well. I remember fighting with my brother over playing with the Nintendo at my grandmother's house, but for some reason his fight with his brother had me laughing out loud. Or how he went to summer camp at a church recreation center. I went to a Christian camp as well. Seriously, I related to most of his life-snippets. Although I never tried recreational drugs until I was much older, I'm glad that I read this book at a time where that still managed to be somewhere in my past to look back on.
There is a sort of Afterword written years after this book was written. Vizzini states that he went to a mental health facility and wrote It's Kind of a Funny Story after that. The book I have might be a little outdated because it still gives URLs to his website, which is no longer running. It also doesn't say anywhere what happened to him. To be fair though, I don't think it even mentioned it in It's Kind of a Funny Story either. I think I actually found out about his suicide after reading that book. I liked it so much I wanted to find others he had written. I was sad when I found out he had died a year before I read It's Kind of a Funny Story.