About book I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1989)
I never read "classic" young adult literature when I was technically a young adult. I thought it was too fluffy or too silly or too angst-ridden to be interesting. Let's face it: I was a book snob. Still am kind of a book snob, but at least I realize my error and am trying to correct it.You know how the human mind makes odd associations sometimes, with nothing to back up the association other than some fluke of a synaptic bridge? When I was younger, I thought that this was the sequel to Summer of My German Soldier. I mean, they both had similar covers in that the girl was white, blonde, straight-haired, and conventionally pretty. They both seemed like mildly tragic books. So, I assumed that the German Solder left/died, and didn't promise his girlfriend a rose garden, and so she worked through her grief.I came up with that when I was ten and I feel like I would have rather read that nonexistent book than the actual I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.This is a book that wants you to know that it is about Mental Illness (capitalized, naturally) and how one brave girl, with the help of her brave and innovative psychiatrist, was able to overcome her "inner demons" of schizophrenia and function in "the real world."Oh, dear. That sounded awfully harsh and sarcastic, didn't it?Good.The story opens with Deborah's parents reluctantly checking her into a treatment center after a suicide attempt. Deborah's father, in particular, really doesn't think it's necessary. We get a bit of background on the parents: both of them come from immigrant families, and Esther, Deborah's mother, was considered to have married beneath her when she married Mr. Jacob Blau. Esther's father made his fortune in America but still suffered prejudicial treatment and hatred because of being an Eastern European Jew. Consequently, he set very high standards for Esther, and then Deborah, to fulfill. His descendants must be brilliant, pretty, successful--everything to "show them" that she's good enough to be in "in society." I apologize for the overabundance of sassy quotation marks, but I don't want to give the impression that I agree with the agenda that good ol' Gramps was pushing, although I understand where he was coming from.Meanwhile, Deborah has created a world within her mind, called Yr. This world has gods that torment her, as well as its own language and mythology. Many of the passages referring to Yr, with Deborah speaking in Yri, are extremely difficult to follow, which I suppose is the point. The world of Yr felt a bit like a ripoff of Lovecraft, although I cannot speak to that particular type of fiction's popularity in this time period.Her therapist has decided that she will take on Deborah's case, even though she (the doctor) is Very Important and Very Busy, because she wants a challenge and she is determined to cure Deborah. In addition to the usual menu of treatments served at mental institutions in the past (the "cold pack" where they mummify you in cold, wet sheets to calm you down is particularly popular here!), Deborah receives no medication, just talk therapy. I think talking about problems is exceedingly helpful, but at this point, depending on what you believe about mental illness, you'll either accept or reject the book.Doctor Fried, who escaped Nazi Germany but saw many of her patients there lose their lives, talks Deborah through the land of Yr and her formative years. Deborah believes that she is forever lost--that she is corrupted through-and-through, and gives the example of trying to kill her baby sister. As they discuss family issues, it comes out that the good doctor believes that Deborah's problems all stem from the undue pressure placed upon her by her grandfather, as well as her parents' behavior. There is even a hint that Jacob, Deborah's father, has a lustful love for her that shows in his overprotective attitude. Finally, there is the issue of Deborah's heritage: as a Jewish girl, she was constantly tormented as a girl because of her religion and ethnicity. All of this, Doctor Blau concludes, has driven Deborah to create her own world of suffering within her own mind. Basically, this book is of the mindset that your parents and your upbringing make you mentally ill.For some mental illnesses, such as eating disorders, I think that disordered behavior on the part of close family members can contribute to poor body image or sense of self-worth, which can morph into a disorder. Experts do acknowledge that trauma while young or some other sort of environmental factor can contribute to schizophrenia, but there is also a genetic component. In addition, scans of patients with schizophrenia show that their brains look different. Physically. This is all easily Googleable (not a word) and comes from sources like the Mayo or NAMI. I would think that a disease that physically alters one's brain isn't something that can be overcome by force of will, which is basically the plot of this book.Joanne Greenberg/Hannah Green based this on her own experiences, and she is currently living a very stable life in Colorado. Everyone's experience with mental illness is different. I would have preferred it had Greenberg written this as a straight memoir. As a novel, it feels Disneyfied somehow (and not in a Frozen-good way). As someone with depression and a brother who has bipolar disorder, I cannot swallow the line about thinking yourself out of mental illness. We've finally started to understand that telling a depressed person to "just think positively!" or "look on the bright side!" doesn't help. At all. So, why do so many readers blithely accept Deborah's "I willed it away" "cure" for schizophrenia? I don't even think it matters where you stand on the meds vs. no meds debate--what it boils down to is: Can you think your way out of mental illness.This turns into a sort of mental mirror maze. Let's use Deborah as our example. She is trapped in Yr, the land of her mind. However, she uses the mind that we (and she) have accepted as misfiring, in a way, to fix itself. Using your brain to diagnose itself and then cure itself is like a bizarre form of biological and psychological nepotism. Other than the thematic issues, I felt that the prose--such as it was--was excessively leaden, and it took me far too long to read this because I kept feeling so darn bored. I would have given up, only I wanted to see this "fantastic journey" to its heartwarming Disney climax. Well, sort of. Writing about mental illness is extremely difficult, and I find it almost impossible to coherently review books that talk about mental illness because a) I have a very complicated relationship with it and b) everyone FREAKS OUT about mental illness. Yes. Even now. In 2014. I think I deleted three drafts of this review. So it might be kind of boring or kind of scatterbrained, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.Maybe I should have just willed myself to write an awesome review.
First off, I'll ask you now, judging by the title what did YOU expect?I wasn't expecting any action. No, not in the slightest. but that title...I don't know why but first time I read it ('twas during my mental illness literature phase)I was like, Wow, I'm definitely giving that a go. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden...it's not a special title but there's a little something magnetic about it. Here's the possible tale that ran through my mind. The protagonist (let's call her Anna), who is schizophrenic, is forced to cooperate with a therapist who's become sort of over the years a jaded woman, tired of this world as much as she is except that she doesn't have what Anna calls her fantasy escape (not an accurate portrayal of schizophrenia, but this novel ain't no expert either). What would happen is that as Anna tries to cement her reality, which isn't exactly perfect, her fantasy becomes almost as dark, closing in on reality and robbing her of her escape. The Rose Garden is what she's looking for, a land of peace, real or not. The climax EMOTIONALLY is when the therapist reaches her peak of frustration (problems at home and with herself) and bursts out, "Look, I never promised you a rose garden--" all she's ever been trying to do is getting Anna "fixed", regardless of Anna's happiness or her fear of getting "fixed". But then this piece of reality only breaks Anna more, and she falls deeper into her dark fantasy, slowly becoming completely incapable of dissecting the real from unreal. Three possible endings: Happy ending: therapist regains her trust in the world and helps Anna, this time with all her heart, to get better and see all the possible good things in the world she would want to be a part of; Bittersweet ending: Therapist quits her job, Anna doesn't get well but now she's finally gone through with her "escape",succeeds, now part of a world she's truly happy in; Plain Sad ending: Anna gets better, because she's not in control of how her mind works, returned into a world she despises, unable to enter her fantasy try as she might because that's just not up to her. (Yes, yes, its basically a mockery of the illness but gimme a break, imagination running high here)Okaaaay I'm a writer and I kind of just had to get that out of the way. I just sort of wanted something like that with this novel.Instead, what the hell?I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is...boring. No, its not even plain boring. Its nothing. Its emotionless, its blank, it leaves absolutely no impression on you at all, its flat, its neither sad nor happy nor tragic or fulfilling. Its...meh. I think that's the worst thing you can say about a novel. There is no...story. There's the idea, little semblance of a plot, but no story. Stuff happens. People cry. Characters talk. More stuff happens. That's it. Two days after finishing it and I don't even remember the protag's name (hence...Anna). Its especially saddening when you think about other great MI novels, The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted (which was just...amazing. Movie was horrible though). What do these books have that INPYaRD lacks? For once, actually living, breathing characters. You actually know them. You LOVE them and feel sorry for them and hate them and love 'em. From the side characters to the main. Rose Garden doesn't even let you know who its main are. Sure, you get their names. Sure, you get their backstories. Fine, I get how they're supposed to look like, how wealthy they are, so what? That's not knowing them. I pictured these characters moving to the tune of the novel as actors dutifully playing their parts. Only thing is, novels are different from films in that the don't have the advantage of simply looking sideways or making a face to convey their emotions, or squinting their eyes and crazy mannerisms to establish what they are. You can do that in print but it's not enough. The characters of Rose Garden move, they talk, they do things but despite all tries to bring you closer to them you can't help feeling that there's a glass wall between you and them, and what you're seeing is really a poor-quality reflection of who they really are.But if we're getting technical...it's basically the story of a a sixteen year old girl put into a mental institution by her parents because of a failed suicidal attempt. She has fantasy world called Yrr. A great chunk of the novel is dedicated to the impossibly dull drama of protag's family at home, struggling to keep things normal without her. Its so **** dull I can't help but GAAAAAAAH. She makes friends but like what I said earlier, they're just names. Names and names and names and more names. Names dropped in the middle of the book, names dropped in at the end. The therapist is one of the worst, though. She just randomly spits out German whenever and whatever. Backstory: World War 2 medical drama. One moment she's there, possibly a main, an important character, disappears a good deal, returns, disappears, replaced by some other doctor I don't even remember, returns, disappears. Gosh. She's also the one who title-drops the, well, title. Within the first 100 pages. For something completely out of the blue. Seriously, she just says as protag takes a break from what she was saying, "--Look, I never promised you a rose garden--" But for NO REASON! I kid you not. Since that sentence is, as we all know, the TITLE, I expected it to have the SLIGHTEST meaning to the overall story. But it's really nothing. Bleh. It would've been okay, but after she says it there is absolutely no sort of callback to it. She just...spurts it out and their back to square one (FOR THE REST OF THE BOOK).It's just very sad, cause, written well, this could've joined the ranks of The Bell jar and Girl, Interrupted. But it's not. Writing isn't mindblowingly awful but the style is not just confusing or irritating, its useless. We didn't need the family drama nor the German therapist drama, because by the end they might as well no have been there. The constant switcheroo between POVs EVERY PARAGRAPH just made it all felt so very cold. I'm nit-picking I know I am, but this book has just been such an epic fail. I had hopes and I kid you not I was genuinely excited (excitement generated 70% by the title yeah, but whatever).But here's the overall thing you coulda gathered from this review:Whatever you expected from this novel, it ain't it.
Do You like book I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1989)?
I read this book to pieces when I was twelve but haven't opened it in about ten years, because I'm a little worried I won't find it quite as brilliant. So I'm basing my review totally on Tween Me's potentially overly-dramatic opinion. Tween Me thought this book was fantastic. The angst! The anger! The questionable medical practices of the psych staff! Deborah's triumph over her schizophrenia, of course, was somewhat lost on Tween Me. I was mainly concerned with how incredibly sexy Anterrabae was (yum), and how much I wished I could speak a magical made-up language like Yr-ish. A work of staggering genius this is not. None of the characters aside from Deborah are ever particularly fleshed-out, and her therapist comes off as kind of a frigid witch. Plus, it definitely has its dated moments, which might make you as the reader stumble a little. But! It's a great look at an above-average teen dealing with a whole lot of crazy.
—Monica!
To get below the surface of this book, one must invest himself/herself. This I was willing to do. As a fellow sufferer of mental illness to whatever degree, I long for memoirs of those who've gone through the same as me. It's easy to read a book without really getting it, and that's why the people in other reviews have given this book below five stars. They're quick to say it's boring, afraid of the cause the book gives for deep thinking, which they probably haven't been able to grasp. They're the ones who've never gone through such mental illness, and hopefully never will. This book wasn't written for them, so of course they'd feel that way. This book was meant for those of my ilk...My mind never created its own world, gods, gestures, language like Deborah's (and the author's) did, but the mental illness aspect is enough commonality. The knowledge of being painfully different in a normal world, peopled with humans who're so luckily hinged (Titans, the author calls them, for being able to live the right way, though they don't realize their strength)...yes, I have this. The want for the Maybe, but also the fear of it...I have this, too. These depictions in the book reach out for those of us who've gone through the same.The strange intelligence of the mentally ill rings beautifully in this book, though some of the things Deborah says are tough to get at times. She speaks in metaphors, and the meaning's not always clear. Happily for her, she has Dr. Fried, who knows just how to handle Deborah and is on level with her in a way most other doctors couldn't be. At some point in the book, Fried goes on a trip, leaving Deborah in the hands of Dr. Royson, a man with totally different methods than Fried. While Fried understood Deborah's need for Yr to be acknowledged as real (as it WAS to Deborah), Royson painfully tried to drive home the lie of its existence, and Deborah can't handle his ways of therapy. This instance shows that people can't just go out to a doctor and hope to find the right one. It takes sometimes several tries to find someone on the right level, which might seem obvious to some but others still don't realize this. Fried was perfect for Deborah, understanding the crucial need for Deborah not to be lied to. Several times she said that the world would not be perfect. Life would be unjust. "I never promised you a rose garden." Saying these things early on and often led to Deborah being able to handle life's ups and downs eventually, though she still had slip-ups.Fried also was able to eventually track down each of Deborah's core problems to their source, a miracle which doesn't happen often in psychology. Fried saw that there was hope in Deborah, because Deborah subconsciously realized that the defense she created from the real world, Yr, had become not just an escape, but also a trap. She cuts herself in her plea for help, not in a suicide attempt, and this leads her to being put in the hospital, where she realizes she belongs almost instantly. She has something in her that's fighting to get out, and that's what leads to her being one of the few to overcome her illness. Another part of the book I liked is Greenberg's showing not only Deborah's thoughts, but the parents as well. In their turmoil and love we see that it's not their fault that Deborah began to suffer. So often we're quick to think that all problems stem from the home life...maybe an alcoholic father, a mother who doesn't listen. That's not the case with Deborah's parents. They're truly loving, which is proof that mental illness can occur to those with even the best family life (this is the case of me, also). Mental illness can stem from anything, really, and I hate that people think of instances leading up to it as being measurable. In many people's minds, rape is a big thing and is a "larger reason", and an understandable one, for an illness, if that's the case. If they hear about a girl who had a bad surgery experience that was one of the core reasons for a later mental illness, they're less likely to take the illness seriously. I think this is a major fault with people today. Mental illness can't be measured like this; instances that might not affect some to much extent, affect others greatly, and we have no right to say one instance is more "worthy" a reason for illness than any other. Those who've never had an illness like this are prone to this kind of thinking...they'd do well instead not to form an opinion at all.
—Brittni
This is a brilliant book and perhaps deserves more than three stars, but there are certainly problems, most having to do with our better understanding of schizophrenia in more recent times. As a historical document, the book powerfully represents a world in which large industrial-size mental hospitals were considered advanced, state-of-the-art facilities. Seclusion rooms and cold packs (trapping a patient in ice-cold sheets) were also considered constructive treatments, as was intensive psychoanalysis for psychosis. Greenberg's descriptions are poignant in this respect, especially because she was herself a patient in real life. She seems to have found the cold packs, seclusion, confinement in a prison-like ward to be stabilizing and helpful, which reminds one of how few options were available for sick people at the time. The other weakness is the depiction of other characters besides the mental patient Deborah Blau. There is much subtlety and complexity in these portrayals, but there is also a frustrating resort to stereotypes and superficiality. The parents, Esther and Jacob, are represented sympathetically but flatly and are also blamed (in part) for the psychosis, an outdated attitude. The younger sister Suzy is even more sketchily represented. The family, I'm sure, would have suffered much more intensely than Greenberg represents, especially since they are given only vague reports on their daughter's well-being. Also, Dr. Fried, although represented as a heroic figure, is never fully fleshed out, and neither are the other mental health workers. I admired the book tremendously, but it was also quite frustrating.
—Rachel
