REVIEW: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.” 

Hi bookbugs!

Today I am (finally) getting around to publishing my review of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg!

This book was published in 1964 and it is a semi-autobiographical novel. It follows the struggle of a sixteen-year-old girl named Deborah who is committed to a mental institution for schizophrenia. Over the coming years, the reader is drawn into the terrifying and all-consuming world of Deborah's mind, the fictional world of Yr she has created; and the war she is waging against herself. She works with a gifted psychiatrist who helps her to understand that she gave the gods of Yr power over her and she can certainly take it away.

From the first page of this novel, I was hooked. I was hanging on every word and could not put it down. Consequently, I flew through it very quickly. It is by no means an easy read, however, it is gripping and gut-wrenching and heartbreaking but it also inspires a kind of hope.

There are no false happy endings or happily-ever-afters, but there is a sense by the end of the story that Deborah can in fact squash her demons in such a way that will allow her to return to the outside world.

My favourite parts of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden are the unexpected moments of humour, of real, laugh-out-loud almost slapstick comedy. With quotes like, 

    “Can you read my thoughts?" she asked them.
"Are you talking to me?" Lee said.
"To all of you. Can you read my thoughts?"
"What are you trying to do—get me sent to seclusion?"
"Go to hell," Helene said pleasantly.
"Don't look at me," Miss Coral said, with the genteel horror of a countess visiting an abattoir, "I can't even read my own.”

and "[She] was as crazy as a bedbug," there are flashes of humour to remind the reader that 'mental patients' are not so far removed from the 'sane.' It is a wonderful way to punctuate the story and bridge the gap between the outside world and the inside world of the hospital.

Altogether, I found this book to be an incredible read, I absolutely adored it and would 10/10 recommend it to everybody and anybody. I give this book 5 stars.

- Rhi xo

Copyright Disclaimer: Photograph is mine, cover art does not belong to me. All quotes used copyright of Joanne Greenberg, 1964.