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A review by jobey
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
5.0
A YA realistic fiction venture of mental illness, the reader follows the story of Craig Gilner, an ambitious but incredibly stressed young teen attempting to cope with the pressures of his developing life (and ridiculously high expectations of himself) along with clinical depression. Just as he’s nearing a terrifying breaking point, Craig is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he is surrounded by an assortment of new people with their own problems, and it’s here that Craig might finally be able to explore and manage his.
There are problems with this book, of course. It primarily takes place in the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy in 2005, so there’s issues of sexual objectification (it seems often that our protagonist is willing to jump any girl his age that looks in his direction) as well as some concerns surrounding Craig’s respect to a transgender character, and occasional mockery of other cultures that could all definitely be considered sensitive content— and those things should be recognized in assessing the read. I’d also submit that on a purely conventional level, there are a few noticeable errors (yet this was a book which was also written in about a month, so I think I can choose to forgive those). I don’t think that the pacing of the book was quite pinned down, it seemed to exponentially speed up as it progressed; there was a slow beginning, a pretty even stroll towards the middle, and a lot happening very quickly towards the finish.
That being said, there are things this book does for me that other books haven’t. For starters, the reality of Craig’s illness and his internal communication with himself about it struck a chord with me. Vizzini’s depiction of mental illness is not confined to the usual tropes; it’s not romanticized, misrepresented, or contrived— it’s simply very, very real, and helped me leaps and bounds as a reader to both empathize with Craig but also feel understood by him. He says things to himself in the book like “I don’t know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time” or “I’m smart but not enough— just smart enough to have problems”. It wasn’t just Craig’s depression that made him relatable; he’s a well-written teenager and a genuine human with obvious virtues and obvious faults. I felt warmly captured by the sense of community Vizzini was able to develop in his world-building, and pleasantly surprised by how quickly and seamlessly he did so. There is an unspoken connection among the patients at the psychiatric hospital, and the conflicts as well as moments of compassion distributed between these characters throughout the story both help carry Craig’s recovery along but also demonstrate a sensitivity to the people around us, how we are all truly more alike than we realize, and how important we are to each other. Probably most importantly, this book reminded me of the wonder that is human consciousness, that it is an incredibly miraculous thing that we get to live, with the honest story of a boy who almost chose not to. This is objectively probably more of a 4 star book, but I feel a personal connection to its protagonist and exploration of unfortunate shared experience which has led me to give it 5 stars and I feel no need to offer further explanation.
There are problems with this book, of course. It primarily takes place in the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy in 2005, so there’s issues of sexual objectification (it seems often that our protagonist is willing to jump any girl his age that looks in his direction) as well as some concerns surrounding Craig’s respect to a transgender character, and occasional mockery of other cultures that could all definitely be considered sensitive content— and those things should be recognized in assessing the read. I’d also submit that on a purely conventional level, there are a few noticeable errors (yet this was a book which was also written in about a month, so I think I can choose to forgive those). I don’t think that the pacing of the book was quite pinned down, it seemed to exponentially speed up as it progressed; there was a slow beginning, a pretty even stroll towards the middle, and a lot happening very quickly towards the finish.
That being said, there are things this book does for me that other books haven’t. For starters, the reality of Craig’s illness and his internal communication with himself about it struck a chord with me. Vizzini’s depiction of mental illness is not confined to the usual tropes; it’s not romanticized, misrepresented, or contrived— it’s simply very, very real, and helped me leaps and bounds as a reader to both empathize with Craig but also feel understood by him. He says things to himself in the book like “I don’t know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time” or “I’m smart but not enough— just smart enough to have problems”. It wasn’t just Craig’s depression that made him relatable; he’s a well-written teenager and a genuine human with obvious virtues and obvious faults. I felt warmly captured by the sense of community Vizzini was able to develop in his world-building, and pleasantly surprised by how quickly and seamlessly he did so. There is an unspoken connection among the patients at the psychiatric hospital, and the conflicts as well as moments of compassion distributed between these characters throughout the story both help carry Craig’s recovery along but also demonstrate a sensitivity to the people around us, how we are all truly more alike than we realize, and how important we are to each other. Probably most importantly, this book reminded me of the wonder that is human consciousness, that it is an incredibly miraculous thing that we get to live, with the honest story of a boy who almost chose not to. This is objectively probably more of a 4 star book, but I feel a personal connection to its protagonist and exploration of unfortunate shared experience which has led me to give it 5 stars and I feel no need to offer further explanation.