Custom Search
|
Custom Search
|
 |
|
Categories:
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 One teenager's choice between the Kingdom of Yr and reality I agree with a couple of other reviewers that Ms Greenberg seemed to be suffering from autism and depression, and not schizophrenia. Many passages sounded more like something out of "Nobody Nowhere" the classic first-hand account of autism. But the diagnosis occurred a long time ago and I'm not a trained clinician. Where the book was best was in the detailed description of Ms Greenberg's confused understanding of reality and fantasy, cause and effect. The book was at its weakest in overall style, giving us full omniscience in a range of characters that clashed with the tone of a detailed first-hand account and unrealistic dialog out of the mouth of a 16-year-old. But even that weakness lends a certain authenticity to the book. A much more polished version would not have the same credibility as one written by someone who in some senses was only an amateur. Life is not beautiful Have you ever felt you can go on in life, and you just want to give up? Try reading, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,by Hannah Green where she talks about a mental ill girl called Deborah. Deborah is sent to a mental ill hospital where she meets Dr. Fried which tries to help her. Deborah goes through the tuffest four years of her life. She feels like giving up all the time, but her doctor tells her, "I never promised you a rose garden." Deborah goes on even with her health problems and confronts the world. Read this book and you will see what problems she goes through. See also:
| ||
|
