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A review by toggle_fow
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
It's me again, tapdancing into the room to lay this worthless 3-star review of a complex classic book in front of you.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the story of a men's ward of a mental hospital. It's run by a despotic nurse and a spineless doctor, and all the patients are emptied-out shells going through a wooden daily routine. When a new patient arrives, he upends the status quo and brings some color back into these men, who have had the living spark crushed out of them by "the Combine."
This book was a deeply unpleasant experience. It was vulgar, scary, grimy, disorienting, and overall made me shudder. Sexually gross, racially gross, abuses and indignities from the first page to the last, and a tragic ending. There was zero fun had while I was reading.
HOWEVER. The skill with which the book is written absolutely jumps off the page.
The narrator is "Chief Bromden," a Native American patient who suffers from episodes of psychosis, but pretends to be deaf and dumb when he is not. The way the author puts us into Bromden's perspective, which tilts and distorts and bends in psychedelic ways, masterfully conveys his fraught inner world. At first I wasn't sure what exactly was going on, as the narrative would describe something I knew could not literally be happening, but I got used to it.
This literary feat of embodying the insane is, in my opinion, the main thing the book has to offer. Kesey apparently underwent experimental drug trials and worked at a mental hospital, which I'm sure informed his ability to bring to life an existence most people can't truly imagine. I also suspect that his writing was also assisted by the copious drugs he was doing both in and outside of the aforementioned trials.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the story of a men's ward of a mental hospital. It's run by a despotic nurse and a spineless doctor, and all the patients are emptied-out shells going through a wooden daily routine. When a new patient arrives, he upends the status quo and brings some color back into these men, who have had the living spark crushed out of them by "the Combine."
This book was a deeply unpleasant experience. It was vulgar, scary, grimy, disorienting, and overall made me shudder. Sexually gross, racially gross, abuses and indignities from the first page to the last, and a tragic ending. There was zero fun had while I was reading.
HOWEVER. The skill with which the book is written absolutely jumps off the page.
The narrator is "Chief Bromden," a Native American patient who suffers from episodes of psychosis, but pretends to be deaf and dumb when he is not. The way the author puts us into Bromden's perspective, which tilts and distorts and bends in psychedelic ways, masterfully conveys his fraught inner world. At first I wasn't sure what exactly was going on, as the narrative would describe something I knew could not literally be happening, but I got used to it.
This literary feat of embodying the insane is, in my opinion, the main thing the book has to offer. Kesey apparently underwent experimental drug trials and worked at a mental hospital, which I'm sure informed his ability to bring to life an existence most people can't truly imagine. I also suspect that his writing was also assisted by the copious drugs he was doing both in and outside of the aforementioned trials.