I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Deborah Blau, a 16-year-old Jewish girl from a wealthy New York family, is committed to a Maryland psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt and three years of building an elaborate interior world she calls the Kingdom of Yr, ruled by gods who speak to her in a private language. The book follows her three-year stay on the violent ward and her therapy with Dr. Clara Fried, a refugee psychiatrist modeled on Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, as Deborah negotiates between the safety of Yr and the painful demands of the real world. Greenberg, writing as Hannah Green, drew the novel from her own teenage hospitalization at Chestnut Lodge.
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A 16-year-old girl committed to a 1960s psychiatric hospital negotiates between her invented inner kingdom and the slow, hard work of real-world recovery in this autobiographical classic.
Largely. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964) is fictionalized autobiography based on Joanne Greenberg's experience as a teenager hospitalized for schizophrenia and treated by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Greenberg published the novel under the pseudonym Hannah Green.
Yes. A 1977 film adaptation directed by Anthony Page was released. The film follows the novel and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden was written by Joanne Greenberg, published in 1964 by Penguin Books, Limited.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is 300 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a standalone novel by Joanne Greenberg, not part of a series.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
