Greenberg, Joanne (Goldenberg) - Brigid Brophy
BRIGID BROPHY
Hannah Green is—almost literally—a naturalist, in that she analyses neither by the creative method of the artist nor in the anatomist's or evolutionist's sense. Hers is a purely descriptive, and to that extent external, account of a natural phenomenon, even though the phenomenon itself is a subjective feeling—what it feels like to be insane….
[I Never Promised You a Rose Garden] makes the impression of being only nominally a novel; should it turn out to be a work of fiction, its value would vanish overnight. In this context, it is almost a mark of the author's honesty that the short passages where the narrative leaves Deborah—usually to follow the parents home and enter into their misgivings—are only just adequate, the work less of imagination than of conscientiously fair-minded reconstruction. In the record of Deborah's own experiences, conscientiousness is intensified into a positive and no doubt painful passion to tell the...
[The entire page is 460 words long]
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