World Famous Comics: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Signet)
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Signet)
By: Joanne Greenberg Publisher: Signet Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Signet Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: November 07, 1989 Reading Level: Young Adult
Product Description: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.
Excellent book I read this when I was younger. I can't even remember when. I believe it was before I was 12. I loved it.
Interesting 3 1/2 I, strangely enough, did not see Deborah's illness as schizophrenia. I am perhaps alone in this feeling, and maybe this explains why I did not feel that the book described that specific mental illness inaccurately.
For me, this is a somewhat pretentiously written novel (probably autobiographical, due to the extraordinarily vivid and descriptive parts) that runs along a suicidal/insane girl's life as she gets better. I did not find the other world parts to be so interesting. In fact, I thought they could have been done much better. It's not so difficult to just invent another world, so why not do it well? On the other hand, I really liked the parts involving other patients. It was difficult to keep track of who is who, because names once mentioned are never explained again, and sometimes names change and you forget.
I liked parts of this book, for example the sessions with Dr. Fried. I felt that they were interesting to read and just kind of cool. Deborah's adult behavior didn't particularly bother me, because I know that enough sixteen year olds sound like that, and she does grow throughout the book. I felt that the emotions were also well done in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden", in addition to the (somewhat pretentious and) solid writing.
A solid 3 1/2 star rating, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to all. It's a bit of a difficult read (hard to do in one sitting) but on the whole it's a really interesting book that I ultimately felt positively inclined towards. There may have been many parts that I didn't like in the book, but I feel that it's still an okay, pretty good book for some people.
Not a favorite, but one that I'll return to someday to see how it's fared.
I never This book had a great impact on me in my 20s. I have met other women that it also impacted. I sent copies to youth centers. To recognize that the world of humans is itself insane can often be the first step to individual sanity
I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN by Joanne Greenberg (Hannah Green) I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is Joanne Greenberg's autobiographical novel about her schizophrenia. In it, Deborah, a 16-year-old girl, spends several years in a mental hospital overcoming her illness.
There is little doubt that the story is rooted in personal experience. There seems to be no other way to explain schizophrenia in such minute detail. Emphasis on certain details, particularly with Deborah's parents and Dr. Fried, clearly indicates to the reader that many aspects of the story have not been fictionalized.
There are some problems with the writing. At times, Deborah reads people, both doctors and patients, in impossible detail that is annoying rather than profound. Just when the reader has decided, "Wow, maybe Deborah should be a psychiatrist," we're immediately told how Deborah never knew why many people disliked her.
The dialogue is also problematic. Deborah certainly doesn't talk like the average 16-year-old, which is fine, but everybody else in the book is similarly refined and sophisticated. The dialogue is stilted. This, combined with the author's narrative style, causes the book to come across as pretentious from time to time.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden starts out promisingly enough, but after its first third it becomes rather tedious. The reader may well skim and then skip page after page of internal rambling monologue and dialogue and interaction with other patients that does nothing to advance the story. Ultimately, the novel is boring.
A note: the book also comes across briefly as unfriendly toward both pacifists and Christianity.
Come for the personal insights into mental illness, stay for- well, there's really nothing else to stay for.
NOT RECOMMENDED
Regardless of her actual diagnosis, a great read INPYARG is a well-written book from the perspective of a highly intelligent adolescent girl. Recent mental health professionals that have analyzed the work do not see her symptomology as schizophrenic/psychotic, but as severe depression, loneliness, and possibly autism, a combination of which led to her "creative" inner detached world. Regardless of what her diagnosis may be today, Green does a wonderful job of capturing the mindset of someone with severe mental illness who is crying for help and simultaneously fears the change that is associated with mental health. A must read for anyone in the field, and highly recommended to anyone else looking for a good read.
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