It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story

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It's Kind of a Funny Story is a teen comedy novel by American author Ned Vizzini. Ned Vizzini's second novel follows a depressed young man who becomes suicidal and checks himself into a mental hospital. The book was inspired by Vizzini's own brief hospitalization for depression in November 2004 (as described at the footnotes at the end of the novel).

Plot Introduction

Craig Gilner lives in Brooklyn with his parents and his nine- year old sister, Sarah. The story begins in medias res, whereas Craig takes the reader back into his past to explain how his depression started. Craig had studied a whole year for a chance to get into Executive Pre- Professional High School. He scored an 800 out of a possible 800, while his best friend, Aaron, got the same grade almost effortlessly. Craig undergoes mental stress in his new school; he couldn't keep up with the rest of his classmates, only scoring an overall 93 average on his report card. While eating out with his parents one day, he was so stress induced that he vomited in the bathroom. He was then put on Zoloft, to cure his mental state. At first his medication was working. But then Craig became so confident that he stopped taking Zoloft. To make matters worse, Aaron invited Craig to a party, only to witness his best friend making out with Nia, a girl that Craig likes himself. After the party, Aaron confesses that he and Nia had preformed oral sex. Craig, of course, can't help but feel left out. The story then fast fowards 2 years after Craig stopped taking Zoloft, whereas he's now fifteen years old. He asks his mother if he could sleep next to her for the night, since he wasn't feeling okay. He secretly was planning on committing suicide. When he called Nia when it was almost two in the morning, he wanted to find out whether he ever had a chance with her or not of ever being together. He then asks what Nia would do if he kissed her. Nia willingly jokes that she'd 'smap' him ( two years ago, when Craig was at Aaron's party, the two of them played scrabble with Nia. Aaron formed the word 'smap' on the board, which he explained was 'a cross between slap and smack' ). After Craig did a few push ups in his mother's bed while she was asleep, he felt like living and dying at the same time. He spies a book of his mother's on the living room bookshelf, and flips to the back, dialing a number that would help people deal with depression. He checks himself into Argenon Hospital, into the Adult Psychiatric section. He begins to meet new people; a man nicknamed 'Humble', who is anything but humble, a transvestite named Jennifer/ Charles (abbreviated as 'J/C'), the self- elected President Armelio who plays cards for a living, Noelle, a girl who scarred her own face with scissors, and Muqtada, Craig's bed ridden by choise Egyptian roommate in the hospital. Craig calls Nia and she confides to him that she takes Prozac, to deal with her manic depression. The information was important because Nia had never told Aaron about her medication. A day later, Aaron calls Craig while he was in the hospital (referring to it as the 'loony bin'). During their conversation/ argument, Craig slips out the information about Nia's Prozac. Craig hangs up before they could argue any further (By doing a trick one of his friends Ronny told him: he would constantly say 'yo' repeatedly, then would say 'fuck you' before hanging up). Aaron visits Craig the next day, apologizing for his behavior, explaining that he thinks that he's entered this state of depression. Noelle asks to meet Craig the same day, wanting to get to know Craig. During this phase, Craig begins to develop a crush on Noelle, while the relationship is mutual. The next day Nia visits Craig, explaining how here and Aaron had broken up for good. Eventually Craig manages make out with Nia in his room, only to get caught by Muqtada. Nia, angered, leaves the hospital. Noelle appears to have been angered, too, since she thought that Craig had feelings for her. On the fourth day that Craigs spends at the hospital, his father and family bring him Blade II to watch as a gift with the other patients. In a plan conceived by Craig, he his able to get his bed-ridden roommate, Muqtada to get out of the room for a while. Craig and Noelle make out. He decided to test out a 'claim' that Aaron had made when him and Nia first preformed oral (he had said that a certain part of a girl felt like 'the inside of your cheek'). When he tests out the claim, Noelle easily takes it the wrong way, but the two make up again on good accounts. The next (and last) day of his stay at Six North. He gives Noelle his phone number and leaves with his parents. He asks his parents if he could walk home by himself; to think things over. He realized that he was crazy to think that committing suicide was an answer to his problems, and concludes that the best thing to do is to keep living. The last words of the novel is 'Live'.

Movie release

An official movie has been slated for release sometime in 2008. Its movie rights have been sold to Paramount.

Trivia

- The front cover of the book is a reference to Craig's hobby of drawing maps. When he was four years old, he tried to trace Manhattan but failed. From there on, he decided that making maps would be a motivation to him, or, an 'anchor' (the opposite of these are 'tentacles'), one of his therapists refer to it as. The day before he left Argenon Hospital, he drew self portraits of everyone that he met, putting streets inside the outline of the person's head shape. The book cover is a mapped-portrait of Craig Gilner.

External links

• Ned Vizzini's Official Web Site