Book report I never promised you a rose garden (Hannah Green)
Explanation of the title:
It's a quote of the therapist of Deborah's therapist Dr Fried. It's when she tells Deborah that life won't be always wonderful and splendid. But that she has to fight to be able to make a objective choice between the real world and her own imaginary world.
Brief summary:
The book is about a Jewish girl: Deborah. Her grandfather wants to infiltrate in the higher social classes by her, she has to compensate the lack of ambition of her father. She feels she can't do it right for everyone. Together with the experiences of prejudices that were made by lots of people to Jews she gets a really negative self-image. She blames al the problems to a tumour that she had. It was successfully operated when she was 5 years old, but she thinks the tumour still attracts everything negative.
Deborah sleeping
Deborah
Deborah Mees and choir 02To escape from the hard world she lives in she develops her own language, Yr. It keeps her on track, it's al she has.
This negative self-image gets her to the point she tries to commit suicide, but she survives this attempt. Then her mother decides that Deborah should be treated in a mental hospital. She is put in the B-ward, which is a ward for the 'light'cases. She develops a great band with Dr Fried, which she visits every day for an hour. But after a while she commits another suicide attempt. Her parents are shocked, but Dr Fried thinks it's a good sing that she gets back her emotional feelings. She is placed in the D(isturbed) ward by then. She gets a better grip on herself here. When she has improved herself enough she even can go live on her own, under supervision,