I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: Book Review

One of the reasons I've not been posting so much this week is that I was determined to finish "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" by Joanne Greenberg - and I am surprised to admit that it was harder work to read than I expected. Based on the author's own experiences of treatment for mental illness (usually described as schizophrenia in blurbs, but never specifically identified), the book describes her committal to an asylum at 16, her years of analysis, and her eventual re-emergence into society.

The book is, of course, a widely read classic, made into a movie in 1977. Vaguely aware of the title before, I was taken aback to find the book was actually published in 1964 and still in print. Since the events it talks about date back to the 1940's, this makes it akin to reading psychiatric prehistory. We are talking here about an era before psychoactive drugs, of huge asylums in which a large number of patients were permanently resident. An era in which restraint (the ubiquitous wet pack), surgery and ECT were mainstream. What therapists there are come schooled in the psychoanalytic tradition and therapy is expected to be hard, painful and lengthy (the author, or rather her heroine, Deborah, takes 3 long years). Family are not only removed to the outskirts of the process but treated with intense suspicion - scrutinised and criticised by the therapist.

The hospital context may be unfamiliar to modern readers,but I had thought I would recognize the illness.  However, Deborah's experience of illness is largely described in terms of the elaborate fantasy world to which she has retreated: a world of gods, an entire geography, and a complete rich language.  Fabulous and baroque though this creation proves to be, it distances the reader from the author: even while it graphically describes her personal experience, it can also be hard to recognize the real experience inside the metaphor.  In fact I noticed from reading reviews of the book around the web that many readers, especially those who had read it first as teenagers, commented that they had read it as purely metaphor, not as an actual description of mental illness.  Still, the many familiar aspects are there, brilliantly recast as characters and places in Deborah's internal world: the chanting Collect of voices, the Censor who watches over what she says and does, the Pit of torment.

Struggling a little with this unfamiliar mythology, I found the early and middle stages of the book quite hard going, but there is no doubt that it is a unique and brave description of the experience of mental illness.  The later sections, where Deborah painfully re-emerges into society, to face the stigma and suspicion of the world, moved me very much.  Throughout the book there are wonderful flashes of humour, often the dark humour of the "disturbed" ward.  Towards the end of her three years, an administrator suggests that Deborah draws up a list of what she has learned that might be useful in life. This list is a wonderful example of Deborah's brilliant and spiky wit.  It includes the entry "Have a tremendous vocabulary of obscene words", which she remarks laconically might suit her for a career as a "Language consultant", or "Have potential for callousness" which might lead to a job as a "Professional assassin", although she concludes gloomily that she does not have the necessary coordination or physical grace for this.

Joanne Greenberg is still working and still publishing - her website is at http://www.mountaintopauthor.com. 

Final verdict: not a book I would give to a friend to help them understand mental illness, but a book I would recommend to someone who had personal experience of mental illness.  Still a classic, and deservedly so.