Monday 13 June 2011

Green, Hannah "I Never Promised you a Rose Garden"


Green, Hannah (Joanne Greenberg) "I Never Promised you a Rose Garden" 1964

Joanne Greenberg wrote this semi-autobiographical novel under the pen name Hannah Green.

What a fascinating book. A teenager suffering from schizophrenia. What is going on inside such a person?

Hannah Green tries to explain this mental illness through the view of different people, first of all the sufferer herself, her time before, in and after the hospital, her parents, family, friends, doctors, therapists.

I think this book is helpful to anybody who wants to understand mental illness and what it can do to everybody involved.

From the back cover:
"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."

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