Product Description

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12880 in Books
• Published on: 1989-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent book
I read this when I was younger. I can't even remember when. I believe it was before I was 12. I loved it.

Interesting 3 1/2
I, strangely enough, did not see Deborah's illness as schizophrenia. I am perhaps alone in this feeling, and maybe this explains why I did not feel that the book described that specific mental illness inaccurately.

For me, this is a somewhat pretentiously written novel (probably autobiographical, due to the extraordinarily vivid and descriptive parts) that runs along a suicidal/insane girl's life as she gets better. I did not find the other world parts to be so interesting. In fact, I thought they could have been done much better. It's not so difficult to just invent another world, so why not do it well? On the other hand, I really liked the parts involving other patients. It was difficult to keep track of who is who, because names once mentioned are never explained again, and sometimes names change and you forget.

I liked parts of this book, for example the sessions with Dr. Fried. I felt that they were interesting to read and just kind of cool. Deborah's adult behavior didn't particularly bother me, because I know that enough sixteen year olds sound like that, and she does grow throughout the book. I felt that the emotions were also well done in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden", in addition to the (somewhat pretentious and) solid writing.

A solid 3 1/2 star rating, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to all. It's a bit of a difficult read (hard to do in one sitting) but on the whole it's a really interesting book that I ultimately felt positively inclined towards. There may have been many parts that I didn't like in the book, but I feel that it's still an okay, pretty good book for some people.

Not a favorite, but one that I'll return to someday to see how it's fared.

I never
This book had a great impact on me in my 20s. I have met other women that it also impacted. I sent copies to youth centers. To recognize that the world of humans is itself insane can often be the first step to individual sanity