I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden became a national bestseller when Greenberg published it in 1964 under the pseudonym Hannah Green. This narrative unlocked the doors to what was previously a mysterious interior — the inside of a psychiatric hospital and the inside of the mind of someone suffering from schizophrenia. The sixties were a decade of revolutionary ideas, and Greenberg's book fit right into the scene by throwing light on the then-obscure topic of mental illness and by providing a new perspective of psychological therapies.

R. V. Cassill, writing for the New York Times, praised Greenberg for showing "courage that is sometimes breathtaking in its concessions." Cassill continued: "the author makes a faultless series of discriminations between the justifications for living in an evil and complex reality and the justifications for retreating into the security of madness." Cassill's only complaint about this novel was that "it falls a little short of being fictionally convincing." Cassill explained that although the story was categorized as fiction, it does not quite fit the mold: "It is as if some wholly admirable, and yet specialized, nonfictional discipline has been dressed in the garments and mask of fiction." However, Cassill concluded that "[t]he reader is certainly not cheated by this imposition."

A critic for The Times Literary Supplement in the article entitled "Calling Mad Mad," also praised Greenberg's efforts: "Miss Green [Greenberg's pseudonym] is excellent when conveying relief and delight at the freedom from the propriety, freedom from lies, and most of all the freedom to call mad mad, crazy crazy. She is excellent too on the inventiveness of the insane." However, this critic also pointed out Greenberg's weaknesses, writing that some of her characters were not convincing, some of the plot predictable, and Dr. Fried, this critic found, is both "sometimes profound" and yet "sentimental." This writer stated that Greenberg "is rather better at describing the terror and imaginativeness of the schizophrenic than she is at the return to normality: her normality is perilously close to dullness."

Writing for the Library Journal, Miriam Ylvisaker found Greenberg's novel to be on the level of Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1964). Ylvisaker then wrote that in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden "the hospital world and Deborah's fantasy world are strikingly portrayed, as is the girl's violent struggle between sickness and health, a struggle given added poignancy by youth, wit, and courage."