Review of It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Page Count: 444
Official Website:Here
Rating:
Quote:"My heart is ramming now. It's beating everywhere. t hits all the spots in my body, and I feel theblood pressuring through me, my wrists, my fingers, my neck. It wants to do this, to badoom away all the time. It's such a silly little thing, the heart."
Description: Powell's
Review: I'm the type of person when, hearing of a future movie based on a book, I run out and get the book. I like to know the ending before all my friends do, and so they could come to me and say "Is it like the book??" "How does it end?" It's Kind of a Funny Story is no exception.

The story starts out with MC Craig Gilner getting into the school of his dreams, Executive Pre-Professional High School. EPPH is the school to go to if you want to be a stock broker, tax man, etc. So basically you had to get a perfect score to get into this high school, which Craig did. But he starts to realize he isn't as smart as the other kids, and then starts the panic attacks and depression.

Then the story cuts back in time, showing Craig meeting his future best friend, Aaron Pardis and his girlfriend, Nia. Part of Craigs depression, he thinks, is that Aaron got to Nia before he did. It shows when Craig went to his first therapist, who prescribed him Zoloft, and after he started to feel better, he stopped taking it, feeling that he was cured. So then (back to the present) Craig decides to throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge, but instead, he calls a Suicide Hotline, and gets checked into a mental hospital.

The story is set in present-day Brooklyn. It's also set (about 185 pages in) in the mental hosptial, Six North. Before each chapter, which I absolutley loved, was a picture of where they were in the story. P.S: Look at the cover. 'X' is Craigs house, then the light blue part on the bottom is his school, etc.

After checking himself into Six North, he meets characters such as Bobby, Noelle, Armelio and Muqtada. They are very unique in a way that Bobby is a depressed father who never sees his children; Noelle is a depressed teen who, instead of cutting her wrist, cuts her face; Armelio is the unofficial 'president' of the ward (basically he wakes everyone up, gives them their meds, etc); and Muqtada is Craigs roommate who doesn't leave his bed, and the one time he does, he finds teenages making out in it.

Overall, It's Kind of a Funny Story is about finding true happiness in yourself, and moving on.