GIRL, INTERRUPTED

GIRL, INTERRUPTED Susanna Kaysen (Turtle Bay, $17) In fixing madness to the page, there are two inherent risks: being so imaginative as to lose the reader, or else securing the mind’s inventions so steadfastly that they become almost ordinary. Susanna Kaysen is a gifted and sure writer who commits the latter error. While the vignettes drawn from her two years in a posh psychiatric hospital are witty and often powerful, their concern with surface detail conveys little sense of Kaysen as the suicidal 18-year-old who was admitted. And what she learned about herself during her stay-or even the reasons behind the suicide attempt that got her there-is never made clear. B- -RAW