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I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Sixteen-year-old Deborah's identity is shattering, as she retreats further and further from the 'normal' world into her imaginary kingdom of Yr, a fantastical inner refuge both lush and horrifying. Sent to a psychiatric hospital, she must, with the help of a gifted psychiatrist, try to find a way back. Joanne Greenberg's fictionalized autobiography became a global bestseller on publication in 1964, and remains a wrenching account of mental illness.
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Published January 1, 2009
About the author
Joanne Greenberg
46 books155 followersJoanne Greenberg, also known as Hannah Green, is a writer whose style lends itself to the mature reader yet simultaneously presents themes suitable for all ages. Greenberg addresses the persistent doubts that plague all of us by relating stories of others in need. Though the scenarios in which her characters find themselves may be unfamiliar to the average reader, the emotions they feel while enmeshed in the plotlines are universal in appeal and scope. Her works include magazine publications, short stories, novels, and a movie adaptation of her book, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2026
At the same time as the Bell Jar, she writes with a contrasting style, outside of herself, and so sympathetic to others. It takes you to dark places but she comes out the other side. Hope and vulnerability
she starts with such a surprisingly wide range of characters and has deep insight to each
Her parents and their nervous care; the tired Dr Fried, and Dr Blau
I don’t love it though. The naive, spare writing doesnt take me in. I can admire and respect this work though
“ Jacob Blau was not a man who studied himself or who looked back over his life to weigh in measurement shape. At times, he suspected his wife of being voracious, picking over her passions again and again with endless words and words. But part of this feeling is envy. He, 2, loved his daughters, though he had never told them so; he, 2, had wished confidence, but was never able to open his own heart; and, because of this, they had also been kept from venting their secrets.
His oldest daughter just parted from him, almost eagerly, in that grim place of locks and bars, turning away from his kiss, stepping back. She has not seemed to want to comfort from him, almost shrinking from touch. He was a man of tempers and now he needed a ride it was cleansing, simple, and direct. But the anger here was so laced with pity, fear, and love that he did not know how he could free himself of it. It lay rising and stinking inside him, and he began to feel the old slow waking ache of his ulcer.”
The nurse students: “It’s time to get up now” she said in the wavering and frightened voice of her inexperience. It was a new group of these students working out their psychiatric training in this place. Deborah sighed, and got up dutifully, thinking: she’s astounded at haze of craziness which I fill a room.”
P18 the first interactions between Dr. Fried and Joanne gives a sense of empathy and human connection and hope she describes the vulnerability of the illness, but with the word that feels most app to use with this author, courage
By page 50, you start to see that this is also Joanne processing her own understandings, processing her own history in a way. This is a journal of the therapeutic process. She manages to allow you into the world with her.
She also paints sympathetic human portraits of all the people she is in hospital with there are no caricatures here – and in a way the mundane is not as dramatic as affectional account nor should it be - in a way. This is not for our entertainment. It almost feels that she wrote this book for herself – many authors say that they write for themselves, but this feels like a journal of self healing.
“She looked toward a landfall, and the wind blew it away”
“The terror now could have no boundary”
“You can see what it is” Antarabae said genially; “we can really do it, don’t toy with us bird-one, because we can do it up, down, sideways; you thought all those descriptions were metaphor: lost one’s mind, cracked up, crazy, demented lunatic, you see they are all quite quite true. Don’t toy with this bird-one because we are protecting you. when you admire the world again wait for our darkness”
There are some electrifying descriptions of the therapeutic process. The light struck the past and there was a seeming sound of good strong truth, like the pop of a hard thrown ball into a catchers glove. Connect. Deborah listened to the sound and then began to tumble over her words, filling in the missing features of the ancient nightmare, that was no more otherworldly than the simple experience of being left alone.
Ch 13 “Time ground on. Deborah was flung and rebounded like a tennis ball in play from stage to stage in YR from earth to nowhere, from sunlight to black window, over the divisions that marked the time of the sane, trying, in passage, not to be cruel. A new group of nursing students had come and gone, some comforted that the mentally ill could no longer strike fear in them, some running in terror from the whip of subtle similarity between the mad women’s uttered thoughts and their own unuttered ones. A young nurse said too loudly: ‘that kid looks through him as if I’m not here at all’. Trying to give comfort, Deborah had to whisper to the nurse ‘wrong not’…Her words only made the flight and student more alarmed and Deborah saw again the uncrossable expanse between herself and the species called human being.”
Friendships emerge, for example, between Deborah and Miss Coral: “ Deborah and Miss Coral met in loose moments between the closings of their separate worlds.”
The contrast between the gentle acceptance of a younger sister and the terror of fear of the parents as they tell Susie of her older sister’s illness: “ I always wondered why those reports seem to be more about Debbie‘s thoughts than about her body… She smiled a little, no doubt, remembering something else that puzzled her. ‘It all fits now, it makes sense.’ She went into the next room to practice a piano lesson.”
Some gentle humour alongside the pathos. How Carol interrupts her fight with five nurses to socialise with Deborah before rejoining the fray.
No easy ending but possibilities of a future
she starts with such a surprisingly wide range of characters and has deep insight to each
Her parents and their nervous care; the tired Dr Fried, and Dr Blau
I don’t love it though. The naive, spare writing doesnt take me in. I can admire and respect this work though
“ Jacob Blau was not a man who studied himself or who looked back over his life to weigh in measurement shape. At times, he suspected his wife of being voracious, picking over her passions again and again with endless words and words. But part of this feeling is envy. He, 2, loved his daughters, though he had never told them so; he, 2, had wished confidence, but was never able to open his own heart; and, because of this, they had also been kept from venting their secrets.
His oldest daughter just parted from him, almost eagerly, in that grim place of locks and bars, turning away from his kiss, stepping back. She has not seemed to want to comfort from him, almost shrinking from touch. He was a man of tempers and now he needed a ride it was cleansing, simple, and direct. But the anger here was so laced with pity, fear, and love that he did not know how he could free himself of it. It lay rising and stinking inside him, and he began to feel the old slow waking ache of his ulcer.”
The nurse students: “It’s time to get up now” she said in the wavering and frightened voice of her inexperience. It was a new group of these students working out their psychiatric training in this place. Deborah sighed, and got up dutifully, thinking: she’s astounded at haze of craziness which I fill a room.”
P18 the first interactions between Dr. Fried and Joanne gives a sense of empathy and human connection and hope she describes the vulnerability of the illness, but with the word that feels most app to use with this author, courage
By page 50, you start to see that this is also Joanne processing her own understandings, processing her own history in a way. This is a journal of the therapeutic process. She manages to allow you into the world with her.
She also paints sympathetic human portraits of all the people she is in hospital with there are no caricatures here – and in a way the mundane is not as dramatic as affectional account nor should it be - in a way. This is not for our entertainment. It almost feels that she wrote this book for herself – many authors say that they write for themselves, but this feels like a journal of self healing.
“She looked toward a landfall, and the wind blew it away”
“The terror now could have no boundary”
“You can see what it is” Antarabae said genially; “we can really do it, don’t toy with us bird-one, because we can do it up, down, sideways; you thought all those descriptions were metaphor: lost one’s mind, cracked up, crazy, demented lunatic, you see they are all quite quite true. Don’t toy with this bird-one because we are protecting you. when you admire the world again wait for our darkness”
There are some electrifying descriptions of the therapeutic process. The light struck the past and there was a seeming sound of good strong truth, like the pop of a hard thrown ball into a catchers glove. Connect. Deborah listened to the sound and then began to tumble over her words, filling in the missing features of the ancient nightmare, that was no more otherworldly than the simple experience of being left alone.
Ch 13 “Time ground on. Deborah was flung and rebounded like a tennis ball in play from stage to stage in YR from earth to nowhere, from sunlight to black window, over the divisions that marked the time of the sane, trying, in passage, not to be cruel. A new group of nursing students had come and gone, some comforted that the mentally ill could no longer strike fear in them, some running in terror from the whip of subtle similarity between the mad women’s uttered thoughts and their own unuttered ones. A young nurse said too loudly: ‘that kid looks through him as if I’m not here at all’. Trying to give comfort, Deborah had to whisper to the nurse ‘wrong not’…Her words only made the flight and student more alarmed and Deborah saw again the uncrossable expanse between herself and the species called human being.”
Friendships emerge, for example, between Deborah and Miss Coral: “ Deborah and Miss Coral met in loose moments between the closings of their separate worlds.”
The contrast between the gentle acceptance of a younger sister and the terror of fear of the parents as they tell Susie of her older sister’s illness: “ I always wondered why those reports seem to be more about Debbie‘s thoughts than about her body… She smiled a little, no doubt, remembering something else that puzzled her. ‘It all fits now, it makes sense.’ She went into the next room to practice a piano lesson.”
Some gentle humour alongside the pathos. How Carol interrupts her fight with five nurses to socialise with Deborah before rejoining the fray.
No easy ending but possibilities of a future
December 28, 2025
really good, bell jar inspired
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews