Review #2 - It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

I was nervous before reading this book.

Last year round April I had read a lot of depression books by accident like The Bell Jar, The Virgin Suicides, everything I read contained suicide in it, Every Day, A Working Theory of Love. I didn't like this. I just went off these books because I didn't want to read about suicide over and over again. So I knew Ned Vizzini had recently passed away and I was scared this would be another Bell Jar.

It was beautiful. It wasn't depressing, it was uplifting. It gave me hope and still was about depression and I loved this.

He spoke so truthfully and I recognised myself in some of the earlier passages of the book even though I haven't dealt with most of the things in the book. There were just these parallels with my lifestyle, especially last year and the schooling and I did relate to Craig. I think that is the most impressive part of Vizzini's writing. He paints people as people, not as characters, not as people who have a mental illness but people.

I loved loved loved the maps and the references to his childhood and just this beautiful enthusiasm for art and creating which I lost last year in the midst of Art GCSE. It reminded me of what I'd lost. I used to be so creative and all I did was create art and read in my spare time and that's not there anymore. 

Could this become the world's top depression-novel-with-authors-that-ended-their-life-afterwards? I think if people stopper heralding The Bell Jar as this beautiful piece of fiction (and it's really not) then I think that, yes, maybe this could. I would love it if it did. This book is made from sadness but it makes you feel like it is about happiness. And isn't that what we need from a depression novel? Not electrocution, not a slow decent into whatever you can call the second half of The Bell Jar, but happiness.

I just think that matters.

Five stars.

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It's Kind of a Funny Story

There are these books, right.
They're normally published by American Publishers and they're the American editions and they've been shipped over on a big plane across the Atlantic Ocean in its entirety.
You know these books?
These books are the weighty ones.
British books are so light.
You read a penguin classic, you know the white and grey and black ones with the white spines and the monochromatic pictures, and it'll be so light.
I like weighty books because they feel like proper books. They are not woosy books. They are strong books. Books that send you promises that they will be important to you.
I'm reading It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. I can feel this deep feeling that this book will mean something to me. That it will be another Looking For Alaska. I read it and I understand even though I've never been through anything in the book.
This book is a weighty book.