It’s not often that you come across a book and think, “How does everyone not know about this?” That was my impression while reading Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Through her vivid – at times harsh and frustrating – depiction of a young woman’s descent into an ever-deteriorating mental illness, Greenberg, in a semi-autobiographical feat, pushes the reader to explore the intricate, spiralling realms of the mind.
Deborah Blau, the tortured protagonist, spends three years secluded in a hospital, battling both otherworldly demons and painful real-life coping mechanisms, from psychosis to self-harm. Through the portrayal of the Kingdom of Yr – the mental landscape personifying Deborah’s illness – Greenberg creates a narrative that is as unsettling as it is illuminating. It is a truthful book. It does not hide in the shadows. It speaks the unspeakable. It illustrates it so vividly that, strangely enough, one cannot help but relate to Deborah – to different extents, in different ways.
Yet, this is also a book about battle and hope. About how, even in the darkest times, glimpses of light can emerge. About how, no matter how distorted our perception becomes, reality – and the love we should have for it – ultimately prevails. About how we should all embrace the world in its “full weight,” words that mark Deborah’s epiphanous escape. It is not about the unbearable nature of existence, not about how heavy the rock is that Sisyphus keeps pushing – it is about the act of pushing itself. Smiling, if I might add a Camus-esque reference.
And yet, this book seems to have slipped into the strange limbo of timelessness and forgetfulness. As Esmé Weijun Wang aptly put it, it is either loved or not known at all. This stands in stark contrast to The Bell Jar, published just a year earlier in 1963. Everyone has read – or at least heard of – The Bell Jar and its charming yet haunted protagonist, Esther Greenwood. I even remember its opening line: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.” Who wouldn’t? And yet, since finishing I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, I keep asking myself: How did it go unnoticed? Why do certain books take all the spotlight while others fade into obscurity? What is the relationship between a book’s worth and its popularity? Can an unknown book be truly great, or is its greatness defined by its readership?
If a book must be defined by anything, it should be by the emotions it evokes—by what it sparks in the reader. And dare I say, Greenberg’s mastery in portraying humans in their truest, rawest selves hits the mark. It is time for you to finally pick up a copy and embrace it, once again, full weight—whatever that might mean for you.
Book Cover of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
