"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 to regain her sanity the listener is inexorably drawn into her private suffering."
"The multimillion-copy bestselling modern classic of autobiographical fiction about a young woman’s struggle with mental health
After making an attempt on her own life, sixteen-year-old Deborah Blau is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a psychiatric hospital many hours from her home in suburban Chicago. Here she will spend the next three years, trying, with the help of a gifted psychiatrist, to find a path back to her “normal” life, and to emerge from the imaginary Kingdom of Yr in which she has sought refuge.
A semiautobiographical novel originally published under the pen name Hannah Green just a year after Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar—a very different portrait of psychological breakdown—I Never Promised You a Rose Garden remains, more than half a century later, a timeless and ultimately hopeful book, ripe for rediscovery by a new generation eager to erase the stigma of mental illness.
“I adore this book. … I continue to marvel at how Greenberg makes visceral the agony of psychosis. … [She] is not afraid to challenge the reader with a true view of the so-called sane world, to hold a crazy candle to reality, and to say, What can we see now? Is the darkness only inside, or is it outside, too?”―Esmé Weijun Wang"
""Amazing, the pain that can be caused by wielding the sword of charm." Rachel idolizes Miri's charm, beauty and family that represents perfection in contrast to the chaos of her own life. She is often blind to Miri's manipulation of others for personal gain, not only in their early years of growing up together in a Denver Jewish Orthodox community, but also in their adult lives. Amid issues of cultural identity and an era of growing feminism, they struggle to sustain a complex, often competitive friendship throughout the challenges of marriage, careers and family relationships. Miri's s daughter, Tamar, initially offers the friends a link that will strengthen their uneasy bond. However, when Tamar develops a passion for the dangerous sport of caving at a very early age, Rachel and Miri's friendship faces a test more severe than any the women have ever experienced. Reconciliation is not where you might expect. This spiritually beautiful novel explores the ramifications of life's choices."
"'Amazing, the pain that can be caused by wielding the sword of charm.' Rachel idolizes Miri's charm, beauty and family that represents perfection in contrast to the chaos of her own life. She is often blind to Miri's manipulation of others for personal gain, not only in their early years of growing up together in a Denver Jewish Orthodox community, but also in their adult lives. Amid issues of cultural identity and an era of growing feminism, they struggle to sustain a complex, often competitive friendship throughout the challenges of marriage, careers and family relationships. Miri's s daughter, Tamar, initially offers the friends a link that will strengthen their uneasy bond. However, when Tamar develops a passion for the dangerous sport of caving at a very early age, Rachel and Miri's friendship faces a test more severe than any the women have ever experienced. Reconciliation is not where you might expect. This spiritually beautiful novel explores the ramifications of life's choices."
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