Book review in the Los Angeles Times

Published February 1st:

By Susan Salter Reynolds

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
A Novel
By Joanne Greenberg
Holt: 304 pp., $15 paper

Since its initial publication in 1964, this classic story of a young girl's diagnosis and treatment for schizophrenia has sold millions of copies and inspired similar ventures like Susanna Kaysen's "Girl, Interrupted" and Augusten Burroughs' "Running With Scissors."

This paperback edition has a new afterword by the author, an essay that reveals just how painful the stigma of schizophrenia was in those days. Joanne Greenberg was institutionalized from age 15 to 19; she left the hospital in 1951 and has returned only once, in 1953. Many years were spent lying about her past; Greenberg was forced to show "sanity papers" before she could take classes at a local college -- there was no guarantee her privacy would be respected.

"I did not write 'Rose Garden' as therapy," Greenberg writes. "I wanted to show what being mentally ill felt like, how it felt to be so deeply estranged from the world." It's a pioneering, unforgettable and generous book.