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Interesting look at mental illness from the perspective of a teenage girl struggling for sanity. Not a light read but pulls you into a complex and deep story.
Sarah D. (Pennergy) reviewed I Never Promised You A Rose Garden on
Helpful Score: 5
A very interesting book about a girl who escapes the problems of real life by creating a magical world in her mind, complete with its own dieties and language. Her parents have her committed to a mental hospital, where she tries to return to the real world. I would reccommend it especially to people who enjoy stories like Sybil's.
This is the amazing story of a teenage girl with mental illness who gets committed by her parents to a mental hospital. Story takes place after WWII. It is amazing how similar things are today and that this is a work of fiction. I strongly recommend.
I read this book because it was one of my sisters favorites and she died just over a month ago. I read the entire book in one day. It was a great book. I disliked when one person came into the book. I liked how they explained the main characters feelings on a visit home. The book made me think though - do people enjoy books about being crazy out of curiosity or because we can empathize?
Great classic on mental illness; in particular, schizophrenia and hospitalization to treat it some years back. Tells what the disorder is like for the patient and the family by an actual case history.
Book 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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
A young girl's journey to health, May 31, 2000
Reviewer: shel99
I read and loved this book as an adolescent. I recently saw it at the library and decided to take it out and read it again. I just finished re-reading it and found it as powerful as I remembered, possibly even more so.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden presents a complete picture of mental illness from the patient's point of view, without the stigma of wrongness that is frequently associated with it. The picture painted is a very real one, from Deborah's relief when the doctors confirm what she's known all along, that something is not right, to the way her family deals with the fact of her illness. Greenberg/Green evokes very strong emotions with her writing. You feel Deborah's fear that her secret world of Yr will punish her for revealing its existence to her doctor, and you share in her triumph when she begins to make her way back to the world. I put down this book with a little more understanding of how it must feel to be mentally ill. I would recommend it to anyone, teen or adult.
I don't think I can explain why I liked Rose Garden so much. The trip inside Deborah Blau's mind, into the world of Yr, is jarring, beautiful and frightening. It is harsh to watch her try to live in both of the equally real worlds of Yr and Reality.
I read this when I was in High School and was awed at the imagery conjured by Greenberg as she described what it was like to live with a mental disorder.
I had no idea until years later when I read it for the second time that this was autobiographical.
