I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

By: Joanne Greenberg

Narrated by: Amanda Leigh Cobb

Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, 16-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 listener 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.

©2004 Hannah Green (P)2017 Recorded Books

Amazing narration and relevant plot

The narrator differentiates the voices so thoughtfully; I can imagine each character perfectly. An amazing story—could have easily felt fake but was so incredibly real and touched me deeply as someone who struggles with mental health. I recommend this book to anyone, and is really one of my few 5 stars in both story and performance.

Picture of mental illness

Excellent perspective on mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia, from a first person point of view. It is a good book to provide hope to those with mental illness.

My new favorite classic.

The land and gods of Yri are so beautifully written, my heart was aching while reading. I truly loved and cared for the protagonist so much, and her experience helped me understand my own life. The narration was well done, I did not find any mispronunciations that other reviewers mentioned. The pace matched the tone of the story.

This has now beaten my old favorite classic “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.”

enlightening

I've loved this book for years after reading as a teen. it was fun to listen to it as an adult.

Better the second time.

I first read this book in the late 1960s as a teenager. At 70, with the lifetime experiences of an adult, it is so much better. We know so much more about mental health now, and it shows. Yet the compassion and work to be “mentally healthy” remains constant. Please read.

Wonderful...unless you can't deal with mental heal

I bought this book when it came out in the 1960s. It really ,resonated with me as I was raised (?) by a schizophrenic parent. I still have my copy although I am now legally blind so I bought the Audible version.

The narration was horrendous, but the book still had an impact on me. Fifty years ago, mental illness of any kind was not a common topic. for novels, especiallyy ones dealing with adolescent schizophrenia and hospitalization. Mental illness still isn't a popular topic as our tolerance for the "different" has regressed some fifty years .

The book was semi-autobiographical. Dr. Fried was really Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reich stein and the facility was probably Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland.

The only other novel I recall from that period about a tren schizophrenic was J.R. Salamanca's Lilith, which is not available on Audible.

the secret word ‘Yri’ is NOT Erie

This girl should study the story better. I enjoyed this book for fifty years before enduring this travesty of a reading. An insult.

Loved this book

I read this many years ago and it is as heartbreaking and heartwarming now as it was the first time I experienced it. I think this should be part of every person's library. It adds a spectacular inside view of what is is like to live and struggle in both your head and out in the real world.

Very underwhelming

I disliked this book. It was very boring and keeps you waiting for a good turn around the corner or some shocking twist and it never comes. The ending was extremely underwhelming. The character development was very poor. To summarize the book doesn’t have any strong points. Please reconsider wasting your time.