Fiction Book Review

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is one of my all-time favourite novels and is one that I have re-read many times. I remember distinctly discovering  it at around the age of 11, and reading it while listening to Coldplay’s ‘Trouble’, a song that reminds me of this novel every time I hear it. I also spent several years trying to hunt down my own copy, and fortunately this novel warranted a reprint in 2009 following a successful run of a play adaptation in 2004. 

The story itself is the semi-autobiographical account of Greenberg’s own experiences as a “schizophrenic” teenager confined to a mental asylum in the late 1950s and early 1960s. If you know anything about mental health care around this time, the situation for patients was fairly bleak, with the use of experimental medications and treatments being widely used to restrain patients. Furthermore, the outcomes for people who found themselves in asylums were poor, with many people remaining institutionalised for life. However, Greenberg’s tale is different: told through the character Deborah and her made-up world Yr, Greenberg describes her experience of a new type of ‘talk-therapy’. With the help of her therapist Dr. Fried (based on her real doctor Frieda Fromm-Reichmann), Deborah gain the courage to fight her illness and re-enter the world. The journey is difficult, emotional, and at times seemingly unreal. However the result is an amazing inside account of one person’s journey to health against all odds.

This book reminds me a little of Janet Frame’s autobiographies To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City . If you enjoy this title you might also like The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen or Sybil by Flora Rheta Schrieber.

 * Also published under the pen name Hannah Green

Rebekah Mapson  |  Lending Services Supervisor