Why read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden?

Book cover of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Book description

The multimillion-copy bestselling modern classic of autobiographical fiction about a young woman’s struggle with mental health, featuring a new foreword by Esmé Weijun Wang, the New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias, and a new afterword by the author

A Penguin Classic

After making an attempt on her…

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Women's fiction

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Why read it?

1 author picked I Never Promised You a Rose Garden as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mikita Brottman

Author

Originally published in 1964 under the pen name Hannah Green, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a bleak but beautifully-written book that has recently been reissued after some time out of print. It tells the story of Deborah Blau, 16, incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The book is a thinly-disguised autobiographical account; Greenberg spent years at Maryland’s Chestnut Lodge, where she was helped in her recovery by the understanding and unconventional therapy provided by Freida Fromm-Reichman (Dr. Fried in the book). Much of the time, Deborah retreats into her own world, with its…

From Mikita's list on psychiatric hospital by women who spent time there.