Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel
    Ebook326 pages6 hours

    I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel

    By Joanne Greenberg

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The classic novel about a young woman's struggle against madness, now a Holt Paperback, with a new afterword by the author

    Hailed by The New York Times as "convincing and emotionally gripping" upon its publication in 1964, Joanne Greenberg's semiautobiographical novel stands as a timeless and unforgettable portrayal of mental illness. Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, sixteen-year-old Deborah is haunted by private tormentors that isolate her from the outside world. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years battling to regain her sanity with the help of a gifted psychiatrist. As Deborah struggles toward the possibility of the "normal" life she and her family hope for, the reader is inexorably drawn into her private suffering and deep determination to confront her demons.

    A modern classic, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden remains every bit as poignant, gripping, and relevant today as when it was first published.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 6, 2009
    ISBN9781429988773
    Unavailable
    I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel

    Read more from Joanne Greenberg

    Related to I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

    Related ebooks

    Contemporary Women's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Library

      Nov 4, 2021

      The Library
      2 min read

    • Article

      Descent

      Jun 14, 2022

      People got out in strange ways. No stranger, I suppose, than the ways they got in. One year an American military helicopter flew too low over an Italian ski village, killing two families headed up the lift. A woman at Hillcrest had Italian citizenshi

      22 min read

    • Article

      The Girl On The Bed

      Oct 29, 2019

      The Girl On The Bed
      4 min read

    • Article

      This Back Is a Familiar Back

      May 1, 2023

      This Back Is a Familiar Back
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Stonemason’s Wife

      Sep 1, 2020

      JOLINA HAS been hearing voices of men she’s never met. Voices like water, clear and cold, eddying at the back of her mind. They’re not real. She knows this. As in, she’s not crazy. They’re only the voices she’s heard on the phone, voices of men who b

      6 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Secrets We Keep

      Oct 7, 2020

      My Story The Secrets We Keep
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Joke

      Sep 1, 2020

      Although best known for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was also a prolific writer of short stories, having published his first while still a teenager. This previously unpublished story likely dates to 1950, the year The Martian Chronicle

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Blackridge House

      Oct 21, 2019

      For a while the phone calls had been getting more insistent. She might be angry (‘I can’t stay here another second, please come and fetch me home’) or matter of fact (‘Hello darling, I’ve had lunch and I’m ready to go now’) or vaguely confused (‘Wher

      5 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Secrets We Keep

      Oct 7, 2020

      My Story The Secrets We Keep
      4 min read

    • Article

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dirty John: The Real Thing

      Oct 2, 2017

      LOS ANGELES - Their first date was at Houston's, a restaurant in Irvine where he opened the door for her and put her napkin on her lap. Candles flickered along the polished-mahogany bar; jazz drifted from speakers; conversation purred. Debra Newell h

      10 min read

    • Article

      These Bad Things

      Dec 23, 2019

      These Bad Things
      9 min read

    • Article

      O Fortuna, Velut Luna

      Sep 15, 2018

      What is Miss Treece’s trouble, according to a popular notion? The man A has failed to show up. Arousing herself at the restaurant, she fixes her lipstick when her solo supper concludes and takes herself down the stairs situated behind the bar. There,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      GRIEF In The Time Of COVID

      Nov 24, 2021

      GRIEF In The Time Of COVID
      4 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      Last Love

      Dec 8, 2023

      Last Love
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Little About Why

      Jun 1, 2023

      A Little About Why
      15 min read

    • Article

      A LIFE LESS Or Dinary

      Oct 1, 2019

      A LIFE LESS Or Dinary
      4 min read

    • Article

      Winchester House

      Dec 1, 2022

      ABOUT TWENTY years ago a friend from my childhood, Skanda, gave me a photograph of a boarding school in Colombo that I had gone to at a very young age for two or three years. Skanda was a relative but only in the Sri Lankan sense, where everyone you

      13 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I The teenaged girl is searching for a placethat goes through, the holeto put the tampon inside. When she finds itshe asks her mother, Is this where the penis would go?Yes, her mother explains.Then I will never have sex. II Sweltering New York City.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    Reviews for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

    3.5/5

    610 ratings22 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      this novel managed (in 1964) to approach mental illness and those who suffer from it with more compassion and tenderness than many of its ilk do today

      it's worth mentioning that Hannah Green/Joanne Greenberg was writing from the context of her own struggles with her mental health sooo that's probably why it's so good (#ownvoices!!)
    • 5/5
      great book :-)
    • 5/5
      A moving, thought-provoking and inspiring account of a young girl's struggle with schizophrenia. Following a suicide attempt, Debra, aged just 16, is committed to a mental hospital. Over the next three years she works with her psychiatrist to understand her illness and explores the possibility of mental health. Her precarious progress is punctuated by periods where she falls back into the terror of her illness. I first read this book as a healthy twenty year old with high hopes for my future, and found it compelling, but strange. Ten years later I found a copy in a second hand bookshop, and re-read it, this time from the viewpoint of a former psychiatric patient with four hospital stays in my not-too-distant past and an uncertainty over my future. Now, I read this book for comfort, hope and above all to remind myself that while psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness may have moved on, the road to recovery from mental illness still follows the same pattern of two steps forward, one step back. Like Debra, my defence mechanism is to retreat into the familiar symptoms of my depression. Reading this book has helped me to recognise this pattern, and gave me renewed hope that there is a world outside my illness - even if it is not a rose garden!
    • 5/5
      I thought this was an amazing and beautiful book. It is sad, but it feels very true. It tells the story of Deborah Blau, a teenage girl who is institutionalized when she is sixteen. Deborah is witty, intelligent and torn between two worlds. Reality, is to her is flat and grey and alien. She escapes into Yr, a fantasy world populated by golden, vengeful gods. Anterrabae, the falling god on fire, Idat, the beautiful veiled dissembler, Lactameon . . . Yr has its own language, metaphors, and calendar. The gods were once her friends, shielding her from the cruel anti-Semitism of the girls at camp or the classmates she could never connect with, transforming her from an "ugly" girl into beautiful, angry creatures like eagles and wild horses . . . but the gods turned cruel and tyrannical and Deborah struggles to fight her way into reality with the help of a kind and wise German woman, Doctor Fried (whom Deborah calls "Furii" in the language of Yr) . . . the writing is very beautiful and Deborah feels very real.
    • 5/5
      It's a fantastic story - getting quite in-depth in explaining Deborah's emotions and thoughts as she moves forward out of her illness and into reality again. Thus the seeming mystery of schizophrenia is clearly explained and no longer seems so mysterious. The only thing I didn't pick up on well was exactly what got her started out of it. Somehow, the light went on in her head and she started to move forward, even without the help of the psychiatrist. It's the light that I'm trying to find myself and somehow keep missing.
    • 4/5
      I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      In this novel Greenberg describes a young girl's battle with mental illness. Deborah is admitted to a mental hospital after a suicide attempt. Over the years, she has built up an elaborate alternative reality in which she can hide from the world, but as she grows older this 'safe' place becomes less pleasant and her suicide attempt is a desperate cry for help. In the mental hospital her situation initially gets worse, but slowly but surely, with the help of a devoted psychiatrist, she fights back the disease and makes her way back into the 'normal' world.I really loved this novel; it gives a very impressive first hand insight into the mind of someone suffering from a mental disorder, and how this can affect all aspects of your life. The novel focuses on Deborah's experiences in the hospital and her feelings of fear, anger and depression. With her psychiatrist she digs into her past and tries to fight back her imaginary world, so she can focus on being in the real world. Though the process is difficult and she suffers relapses several times, she doesn't give up the fight.I found the novel very realistic and, having suffered from depression myself, some parts were very recognizable. The methods used in the mental hospital are outdated, so the novel also gives a nice view of psychiatric treatment in the 60's.I think this novel would be a good read for anybody who wishes to understand more about psychiatric disorders and what it's like for a patient. As for myself, Deborah's strength to get up and try again gives me hope for the future - there might be relapses, but you can always get up and try again...
    • 2/5
      A semi-autobiographical book about a sixteen year old schizophrenic girl who lives in her dark imaginary world. Her parents take her to a mental hospital where she stays for three years.
    • 4/5
      No she didn't, but I can. Rich in a language all its own. Wallow in it.
    • 5/5
      I read this book as a teenager. It was absolutely a revelation to me, life changing. I read it and felt understood, and felt like there was someone else who was farther along the road than I was, and if they could make it back, then I could too.
    • 5/5
      I read this book many many years ago when I was in jr. High school, the impact of it has stayed with me all these years, I am 56 yrs old now. A very powerful, insightful look into mental illness and the perception and understanding it takes to treat it successfully.
    • 5/5
      I read this over forty years ago, but it made a lasting impression. The imaginary world that Deborah creates is vivid and its allure is understandable. I learned that being sane doesn't mean that you can't be cruel. I remember a story in the book about a patient who gave the psychiatrist a knife because she felt the doctor needed it more. The book made me a fan of Joanne Greenberg, although I recollect that she was called Hannah Green back then. This paperback version from 1989 puts Hannah in parentheses on the title page.I remember a college friend telling me how much he identified with the main character. I also remember a short story by Zenna Henderson, I think, in which a woman is sent home cured from a mental institution only to realize that the world is an empty, scary place without the structure and sense of fullness that her compulsions give her and she re-embraces them.
    • 5/5
      I've read and re-read this book since I was a teenager. Every time I gain something from reading it, whether it's the young woman's journey, or the details of the insane asylum where she lives, or the lives of the other women with whom she's housed. It's a frightening and sometimes difficult read, as the images stay with you, but it says a lot about why the mentally ill need good, clean, compassionate living conditions with help and therapy.
    • 5/5
      Compelling & dark. A great book, with lots of dramatic turns.
    • 5/5
      recommended for: those interested in mental illness and adolescents, those who enjoy a good novelI first read this in 1966 when I was 13 and in the 8th grade and it became my favorite book and remained my favorite book throughout high school. I reread it many times, although it's been years since my last reading. This is a story of a young woman ages 16-19 who is suffering from severe mental illness (in the book she is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia) in a mental hospital. My understanding is that this book is based on a true story and the hospital was Chestnut Lodge and the psychiatrist was Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Reading it now, it seems as though the main character, Deborah, was probably actually suffering from major depression with psychosis and not schizophrenia at all – but that hardly matters. It’s a good story about making an effort, one's ability to change, hope, and friendship, and it’s written with a lot of empathy for all of the characters. And I admit that I so identified with Deborah that I didn't even absorb that fact of her psychosis; I took the descriptions as metaphor.
    • 5/5
      This book changed my life. I first read it as a teenager battling with what I later learned was anxiety disorder; at the time I thought I was simply mad. This book gave me hope and a sense of not being alone that I really do believe helped me through a very dark time. I have since re-read it and think Greenberg does an excellent job of conveying something of the interior life of mental illness.
    • 2/5
      I read this book because as a prior Psychology Student, I thought I would enjoy this book. However after reading it, I felt it was rather odd, and I could not really get into it. It actually made me feel like I didn't understand the character at all, and that maybe I had even chosen the wrong major if I could not get into this book? The different world and language was confusing. I read before I go to bed, so maybe I wasn't in my best mind when reading. But I don't know, I just didn't like it at all.
    • 3/5
      This book is rather horribly dated. Mental hospitals and the treatment of schizophrenia in the 1960s have very little in common with those things today. Deborah spent years in the hospital, treated with such things as cold packs (wrapping her mummy-like in cold wet sheets) and psychotherapy, rather than the anti-psychotic drugs they used today. The author based the book on her own experiences, but I have read that her schizophrenia diagnosis was probably inaccurate and she most likely suffered from depression with psychotic features.This book might be good for people who want to know what the mental health system was like in the sixties, but I don't think it would do a schizophrenic person any good as far as getting insight into their illness and treatment.
    • 4/5
      I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a very slow pace book. At first, I thought it was boring, but as I read on I enjoyed the slow pace. It is a sad book, and I would understand if someone didn't like it.
    • 4/5
      An intriguing view of insanity from the inside. The story is told from the perspective of a highly intelligent young woman who lives partly in a world she has created in her own mind. Appropriate for anyone over 13.
    • 5/5
      I found this fascinating. The bright and beautiful world of Deborah's madness, the unforgettable characters in the hospital, the slow and not so steady progress of the therapy sessions, the hopeful ending that satisfies without being impossibly miraculous. A great read.
    • 3/5
      Deborah seems to suffer from what would be diagnosed as schizophrenia today. She frequently retreats, or is pulled into her imaginary land of Yr, complete with own language, philosphy, gods, and more. Her parents finally make the choice to send her to a mental institution and there she works with Dr. Fried, or Furii as Deborah calls her.While I enjoyed the descriptions of Yr, the book was slow to go through and hard to follow at times. Also, the way she is treated in the book would not be an appropriate way to treat that mental illness today.