Ned Vizzini brings a story about healing and growth, a coming-of-age story, It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Largely influenced by Vizzini’s experience at an adult psychiatric hospital, the book was written a little over seven days after his stay. Craig, the main character, reflects the widespread struggles with mental health and peer pressure in an elite private school. Through ever-changing friendships, Craig begins to understand the fragility of life. Yet, with the carefully woven support of his family and new-found friends, he realizes he has let go of the stability in his life but can one day hopefully find it again. While this book mainly revolves around mental health, the universal application throughout the book is the humanity Craig demonstrates. Craig’s small actions toward other characters bring a feeling of unity and hope that readers can relate to. It glues the story together and reflects Craig’s character development.

Craig’s friendships were the stereotypical friendships on the high school TV shows. They were messy and toxic, manipulative and degrading. Yet, Craig struggles to let go of them because they give him a sense of stability and community that he struggles to find in other parts of his life. His best friend, Aaron, pushed Craig beyond his limits—bringing excitement and risk to Craig’s regular life of repetitively studying. However, the constant crash he feels after these events continues to drown him deeper in depression. Craig feels lost throughout the book, unable to form goals after finally getting into his dream school. With no true purpose, he’s unable to muster his strength and energy into anything. After almost leaving his house at midnight to commit suicide, he calls the suicide hotline. There, they direct him to the nearest psychiatric hospital. He’s admitted into it but is grouped with the adults as the hospital is renovating. He has no responsibilities and no existent work staring at him. For the first time in the book, readers can see who Craig is without the pressure.

While the beginning of the book was the backstory and the build-up to Craig’s eventual growth, it was lacking in many aspects. Vizzini dove mainly into Craig’s friendships and his chronic depression. Yes, it acknowledges the truer parts of his story, but it was lacking in human connection, especially between him and his family. In the duration of the five days, Craig is mentally able to separate himself from his outward life. The contributing parts that made the story from flat to emotional were the small changes Craig made to his outside life with the encouragement of the patients. When Craig enters the hospital, he can use the telephone to call people on the outside. Listening to the voicemails of people from his school and his best friend makes him anxious, so he calls the one friend, someone he wished was more than a friend, that he feels comfortable around. When he tells her about trying to commit suicide, her first reaction is “‘You wanted to kill yourself over me?’” (Vizzini 236), which Craig immediately denies. After finishing the phone call, on an almost parting finish, he announces “to the hall: ‘I think that that’s over!’ Ebony stomps her cane, and Armelio claps” (Vizzini 236). While Craig’s friend, Nia, deserved to be cut off from his life (from playing Craig and Aaron, smoking weed, and more), the scene was more memorable than the sweet karma delivered to her. Ebony’s and Armelio’s support was unexpected yet touching. This was barely a day after Craig stayed at the hospital, but he received support from other patients whom he exchanged a couple of sentences with. They’re supportive and more knowledgeable in terms of ‘worldly experience.’ In a way, even though they’re considered ‘broken’ in terms of surviving independently, they can give Craig the advice he needs. The artistic masterpiece was that they didn’t even spout the words that come from the usual adults from Craig’s life. It was the fact that they communicated so much in what would seem like unintelligible gestures.

Later that night, Aaron calls him to joke about Craig’s situation. Despite the gravity of the situation, Aaron cannot realize who Craig is right now and, as a person, who he struggles to be. Craig finally slams the phone after the conversation, unable to relate to Aaron anymore. The next day, when he goes to breakfast, he finds he has an appetite for the first time. During breakfast, he listens to Johnny, another resident at the hospital, stress about an interview for a new adult home. After seeing that Johnny doesn’t have a professional shirt, he  offers to lend one to Johnny. Johnny replies, ‘You would do that for me?’...We look into each other’s eyes as we shake [hands]. His are still full of death and horror, but in them I see my face reflected, and inside my tiny eyes inside his, I think I see some hope” (Anderson 270). Perhaps Craig wanted to give forward in the world after getting off the phone call with his jerk of a friend. Yet, the simplicity of Johnny’s problem revealed another part of Craig. Craig often talked about his “anchors”: the simple things in life that grounded him into what’s happening around him. In Craig’s outside life, he’s constantly drowning under the expectations of his teachers and the comparisons between him and his classmates. However, Johnny was panicking over a T-shirt, a problem that Craig could easily solve. The beautiful part was that something so simple for Craig was unthinkable for Johnny. His first reaction is that he can’t believe that Craig would do something like that for him. While the reaction isn’t unusual, both inside and outside the hospital, Vizzini was able to approach the stigma and feeling of helplessness regarding those struggling with mental health. Craig’s offer, while something that wasn’t all that unusual, revealed Johnny’s struggles but the hope he sees from a gesture.

Finally, Vizzini can convey a sense of unity among the people at the hospital with the careful use of details–that at first seem insignificant. In the scene above with Johnny, they begin discussing the sizes Craig and Jonny are to make sure the shirt would work for both. Johnny says he’s a ‘medium. What are you [Craig]?’ ‘Uh, child’s large.’...’I think it would fit, [Craig says]’” (Vizzini 269, 270). When I first read the book, I hardly noticed the detail hidden in the conversation. However, after re-reading for a closer look, the unusual part is that Craig is 15. An average 15-year boy’s size would be in the adult sizes, generally in the slightly higher ranges. However, Craig is only a child’s medium. The small detail in the conversation adds a lot in terms of imagery of who Craig is. It also reflects a lot about the habits Craig has developed because of his friends (i.e., weed) and depression (i.e., irregular appetite and eating schedule). It shows Craig’s vulnerability in terms of physical condition and references his daily life. Vizzini is able to take advantage of the smallest parts of a dialogue, which at times may feel inconsequential but play a larger part in the sense of imagery and hidden meanings.

In It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Vizzini brings out the humanity in the characters. Personally, the beginning started slow–as a sort of preclude to the latter half of the story. Like with most books, though, through careful engagement, the carefully planned details bring emotion and physical aspects to the characters. The scenes especially memorable weren’t those that were filled with drama and teenage life–they were the ones that made the characters seem like real people. They weren’t understood by superficial reading. They were understood through the appreciation of the gestures and reactions of the characters uncommon from daily life–and that’s what the book eventually comes to be: a reflection of humanity.