Book review: "It's Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini

Warning: major spoilers ahead and discussion of mental health issues.

I get a lot of reading recommendations from friends and family, and while I don't always read every single thing I get recommended by them I do consider all of them. My sister came to visit (a shamefully long while ago now) and lent me a few books, among them was It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. After reading the blurb I was a little unsure of it, but hoped that the title was a little more self-deprecating than literal.

It's Kind of a Funny Story was published in 2006 and follows the story of Craig, a teenage boy from New York who finds himself admitted to an adult psychiatric ward after he becomes suicidally depressed. While on the ward he meets a cast of colourful characters, including Muqtada, a man who rarely leaves his bed, Noelle, a girl who gave herself facial scars with scissors, and Jimmy, who rarely says anything but "it come to ya!" The novel is based heavily on Vizzini's own experiences in a psychiatric ward in 2004.

The thing I liked most about It's Kind of a Funny Story was the characters and the heart and personality that they all had throughout the novel. Every character seems extremely human, and this is probably due to the heavy real-life aspect of the novel. None of the characters are reduced to being a pastiche or caricature of mental illness and instead come across as a bunch of cheerful and friendly, if slightly eccentric, people. None are reduced to their various mental illnesses - and often it is not even clear what is "wrong" with them. Often in media and society mental illness is erased and swept under the rug because the symptoms are generally not physical and people can be seen to be making it up for attention or making it into a bigger deal than it is, or else it is fetishised and romanticised, treated as something compelling and tragic. From this perspective, It's Kind of a Funny Story is extremely refreshing.

This counts for the characters outside the mental hospital as well - Craig's family and friends are all dealt with in various ways. In particular I felt that the peer pressure side of things he experiences at the hands of Aaron was well-written: Aaron is believable as a "cooler" guy who Craig would look up to and want to emulate, and his making fun of Craig after the latter is admitted to the ward is also unfortunately realistic. I had trouble with the character of Nia throughout the novel, though; I didn't understand why Craig was so interested in her when she seemed neither interesting nor particularly nice.

Something else I liked was the maps and the process by which they help Craig begin to recover, as well as the focus on art as a way to deal with mental health issues. The idea of seeing people as maps and drawing them seemed like a really interesting and unique idea.

I found the ending for It's Kind of a Funny Story to be extremely positive: Craig leaves the hospital feeling better than he has in a very long time, with a new appreciation for the things that make him happy and a new direction and purpose in life. I felt generally very happy with how the novel ended but also slightly dubious as every single person I've ever spoken to about their experiences with mental illness has said that the healing process tends to be long and slow - for Craig to be all but cured in only five days seems extremely far-fetched.

Finally, I found it interesting to see the contrast between this and the contemporary passages in Emilie Autumn's The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, which I reviewed about two years ago. Both novels feature autobiographical or semi-autobiographical protagonists getting put into mental hospitals for suicidal depression and both are kept longer than they originally think they will be, but the similarities largely stop there. Where Craig's experience is generally not unpleasant, Emilie's is far more like being imprisoned, and the ending of The Asylum is very much not cheerful, whereas Vizzini chooses a more hopeful end for his novel - probably a good idea as it is meant to be more of a darkly funny story than simply a dark story.

Overall, I enjoyed reading It's Kind of a Funny Story: the characters are interesting and varied and the story is compelling, despite the slightly overly-positive feel to some of it.

Have you read It's Kind of a Funny Story? What did you think of it?