Title: It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Author: Ned Vizzini
Publisher: Hyperion
Publication Year: 2006 (this edition 2015)
ISBN: 9780786851973
Rating: 5 stars
Trigger warnings: This book deals with various mental health issues and suicidal thoughts and actions.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so I’m ending the month with this YA book centered around topics of mental health. I remember seeing several people at school reading this book when it first came out in 2006, but somehow I never got around reading it until now.
The book follows fourteen-year-old Craig Gilner. Craig had spent his last year of middle school pushing himself to prepare for the entrance exam for Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School. While a public school, Pre-Professional is extremely exclusive. It’s a very rigorous school, but students there make the connections they need to get into good colleges, find good jobs, and live comfortable lives. That basically sums up everything Craig wants for his future, so he spends all of his free time studying for the exam. It’s no surprise that Craig gets a perfect score on the exam and the day he gets accepted into Pre-Professional is the best day of his life. Even better, his best friend Aaron, and Aaron’s girlfriend, Nia, who Craig secretly has a crush on both got in as well. Craig’s future is looking bright.
However, the good days don’t last for long. When Craig starts high school, he realizes that the entrance exam was the easy part of Pre-Professional. He is faced with an unbearable workload. He struggles to maintain a 93 average and doesn’t participate in any extracurricular activities. At a school for extremely high achievers, this means he is falling behind. It is also hard because Aaron and Nia don’t seem to be experiencing those same struggles. Craig finds himself feeling like he isn’t in control of his life. He is unable to eat, and sometimes unable to do anything at all other than staying in bed staring at the ceiling for hours at a time.
He tells his parents that he feels like he might be depressed. They are extremely supportive and get him psychiatric help immediately and are willing to do whatever they can to help him. While Craig is grateful for this support, he feels additional guilt because of the financial and emotional strain his illness puts on his parents. Craig’s doctor starts him on Zoloft and it works. He starts to feel better and be able to function more. He also starts therapy to talk about the issues in his life that cause his anxiety and make his depression worse. He eventually feels back to normal enough that when his Zoloft prescription runs out, he doesn’t feel like he needs to call his psychiatrist to request a refill.
Without the Zoloft, the improvements Craig had been feeling fade fast. His depression comes back in full force. He struggles with not being able to eat or sleep and feelings of worthlessness. He doesn’t tell anyone that he stopped taking his medication. Craig begins experiencing suicidal thoughts and makes a plan to complete suicide. Before Craig can put his plan into action, he gets the idea to call the Suicide Hotline. The hotline advises Craig to go to his nearest emergency room, which he does.
At the emergency room, the on-call psychologist suggests that Craig be admitted to the hospital. Craig agrees thinking that they will keep him for a couple of hours, put him on some fast-acting Zoloft and let him go later that day. Craig is a little dismayed to discover (once he and his parents sign the admittance paperwork) that he will be staying for a minimum of five days and that due to hospital renovations, he will be staying with the adult psychiatric patients on Six North.
Six North isn’t what Craig expects for a psych ward. Firstly, they don’t want him to use the term psych ward. Secondly, there are a lot of rules. There are also a lot of people with diverse diagnoses on Six North. Some are first-time or short-term patients like him, and others are well known because they are frequent visitors or have been on Six North for a while. He is also shocked and intrigued to meet Noelle, a girl about his age. Over the next five days on Six North, Craig develops relationships with his fellow patients, including a romantic relationship with Noelle and rekindles the passion for drawing that he gave up sometime in his childhood. When Craig is discharged, he feels better and stronger. He made connections in the hospital that made him feel fortunate to have the family and support he has, he thinks he maybe has a girlfriend, he set boundaries in his toxic relationships with Aaron and Nia, and he has decided to transfer from Pre-Professional to another high school where he can pursue his art.
This book is filled with lovable and unforgettable characters. Vizzini, for the most part, writes Craig’s friends on Six North with compassion and understanding. Craig sees them for more than their mental illnesses, while understanding that their illnesses have a huge impact on them and that understanding is passed on to the reader.
The only real exception to this is the character of Jennifer. During his first day on Six North, Craig is attracted to another teenager he is told is named Jennifer. Jennifer calls Craig over and he can’t believe a hot girl would be interested in talking to him. As he begins talking to Jennifer, Noelle holds up a sign behind Jennifer’s back that says, “Beware of Penis.” Craig is confused by this, but as they continue talking, one of the staff strides in and starts calling Jennifer Charles. After Jennifer/Charles (how the character is referred to for the rest of the book) leaves, Noelle holds up another note that says, “Don’t worry. He/She/It gets everybody.” Other characters refer to Jennifer/Charles as a “transvestite,” but Jennifer/Charles mentions that they are on hormone therapy. This part of the story didn’t age well. I had to do some research because I was in a little over my head here. There isn’t a ton of information out there, but based on what Yale Medicine has to say, “transvestite” is an out-dated and no longer really used word for a cross-dresser, which is someone who is cis-gender but enjoys dressing up as the other gender (so, like cis Drag Queens and Kings, for example). Whereas someone who is transgender feels that their gender identity does not match their biological sex and often gets gender affirming care to better match their secondary sex characteristics to their gender identity. However, as a person who lived through 2006, a time when we were much less enlightened about these topics as a society, I also realize that transgender people were sometimes referred to as “trannies,” or “transvestites” and laughed off the way Jennifer/Charles is in this book. If Jennifer/Charles was really on hormone therapy treatments, she likely was transgender and referring to her as an “it” (unless that is her preferred pronoun) or deadnaming her are extremely inappropriate. Because this is a YA book intended for teen readers, I think this is definitely a discussion adults need to have with their teens about this book. While these descriptions and the way this character is treated were sadly typical of the time, thankfully, most of society has a greater understanding of this topic now and modern readers will know this is inappropriate whether Jennifer/Charles is transgender or a cross-dresser.
I do think this book handles Craig’s suicidal thoughts really well for a YA book. The idea of teenagers reading about suicide can be scary because they are searching for their own identities and often try on aspects of identity they see in the media. They also are at a stage where they are constantly bombarded with big feelings and can feel depressed whether they have clinical depression or not. I think it is understandable to be concerned that this book would maybe encourage some teens to think about suicide in a more personal way—for this reason, this book has been banned in several places. However, before Craig leaves to attempt suicide (he is planning to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge), he has second thoughts. He reads a book about grief that his mother recommended to him and the book encourages him to call the Suicide Hotline. The hotline encourages him to get help, which he does. Throughout his stay in the hospital, almost all of the adults Craig encounters praise him for calling the hotline and getting help instead of going through with his plan. He himself is glad that he changed his mind. Without being preachy, the book strongly encourages any readers struggling with thoughts of suicide or suspecting that they may have a mental health issue to get help. I think that is a positive message and a good one for young readers to hear: it’s ok to have problems, but get help before doing anything drastic.
Vizzini also struggled with mental health throughout his life. In fact, he wrote this book in the month after he spent a week in an adult psychiatric hospital in Brooklyn in 2004. Sadly, Vizzini completed suicide in December of 2013 at the age of 32. Much of Craig’s story mirrored Vizzini’s own. Vizzini was also a Brooklynite who attended a highly competitive high school. He was published in The Times at 17 and published his first book as a young adult. Craig is so realistic and I think so relatable because he is based on Vizzini’s real, lived experience.
This book broaches hard topics with sensitivity and compassion. It mixes the serious with the funny and encourages those struggling with their mental health to seek help sooner rather than later. While not all parts of this book have aged well, I still think it is a great and worthy read.