Book Review: “Prozac Nation”
In the afterward, Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel writes, “As I found myself saying to not a few people that they found the book angering an annoying to read: Good. Very good: That means I did what I had set out to do.”
It’s too bad that couldn’t have been in the introduction.
It Sucks
The list of just why this book sucks is as long as my arm, but I’ll boil it down to the basics. First off, the title is incredibly misleading. The full title is Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. What impression does that give you? Especially since it’s non-fiction? By using the word “nation”, the title suggests that the book is a look at many American’s battles with depression — not just one freaked out chick.
No Face I Recognize
Some people with depression have enjoyed this book, partly because they claim that they can identify with uberbitch Wurztel. I’ve had clinical depression sice the womb and I do not see much of anything familiar in the shattered mirror of Wurztel’s ravings, tortured love life and moans. You just want to smack her. Heck, I STILL want to smack her.
It takes her 195 pages of self-obsession before she starts to make any kind of a point (and then completely fails to do so.) When you think she’s onto a point, she suddenly changes her mind and champions another point, which she then drops by the end of the book.
The point of the book is that there is no point.
Huh?
If you’re looking for any help on how to deal with your own depression, steer clear from Prozac Nation. It will only make you feel more depressed than ever. The book hints that there is no hope for people with atypical depression, sice she both tears apart talk therapy and praises it. She also does the same for Prozac, lithium and just about any other drug that popped up in her life.
If she wanted to just portray what it’s like to like with depression, she could have done it in a few pages instead of taking 195 out of a 368 page book just to go over the most boring pints of her life. She’s actually had a very interesting life, but skims over anything remotely interesting. For example, she casually mentions in one sentence that she interviewed Joni Mitchell. But then she spends chapters about lying in bed staring at the ceiling wondering why her boyfriend never calls. Screw that — I want to know about what it was like to interview Joni Mitchell.
A much better book about what depression is like and how to get through it is William Styron’s Darkness Visible.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
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