Review: It’s Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini

For such a moving and detailed look at an important subject, I can’t believe how little I’ve heard about this book. I was hooked from the first sentence: “It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.”

It’s Kind of a Funny Story is a brutally honest contemporary following a teen who has a mental illness—yep, it’s another one of those. But out of the thousands already published, this one stood out because it was so well written.

My hat goes off to Mr. Vizzini. He gave an honest and informative description of exactly what mental illness—in this case, depression—does to a person. He showed the inner workings of fifteen year old Craig’s mind, how depression slowly crept up on him and pressure built from places he’d never expected, such as school and his friends.

Craig is afraid of what he calls the “Tentacles” overwhelming him. If he gets low grades, he thinks this will set him up to get into a bad college and get a bad job and thus fail at life. He’s constantly anxious and over thinking things. After one particularly bad night, Craig gets admitted into a psychiatric hospital.

The story follows Craig before he became depressed—what he calls “the time when he was happy”—and after, showing his days in the hospital and the friends he makes there who are just as screwed up as he is.

This was a very emotional story. I can be pretty cold hearted when it comes to these kinds of books, but I found myself tearing up when Craig’s mom found out that her son was planning to kill himself.

The loving support provided by Craig’s family was amazing; I loved the characters and their realistic relationships, the fantastic dialogue that made me crack up, and above all how the people in the hospital were painted as real, no matter what kind of illness they had. Some people think having a mental illness is “cool,” a way to stand out, and that saddens me so much. Craig’s friend Aaron was this way, but the author showed how horrible depression really is.

I think this could be a very important book for someone who has never experienced depression. To be able to step into Craig’s shoes was eye opening.

“Sometimes I just think depression’s one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”