Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having seen the movie a long way back and loving it, I was excited to read this book and finally got around to seeing the movie after founding myself in a run of reading list which contains classics and Top 100 books to read. So yeah I was finally got around to reading it and my oh my how it was. So thinking of movie if followed the book almost page to page and was a very faithful adaptation so yay to that.

The story is set in a mental institution like most of us already know through the movie or having read the book and is told through the viewpoint of Chief Bromden a gigantic half-Native American who is an inmate who is playing deaf and dumb to be passing his time and all inmates are under the thumb of the head nurse Ratched who is tyrannical figure in the asylum.

All is shaken up after the arrival of a new member McMurphy who may or may not be crazy but his upbeat behavior brings a spell of improvement in the life of the inmates. Since the book is told through Chief who himself is mental patient his narration is flaked out with unreliable details but this book is remarkable and funny and sad and unreliable and very reliable narrative set in the asylum and we learn about the lives of the members staying there and I so hate Nurse Ratched that I can sparsely speak or even type and that's why this review got delayed while I allowed the hate to brew and rise up and it still wasn't enough. The movie villain was hateable and oh boy did I hate her but reading about her ugh I can't even. Well let it be the end of it then.

So yeah watch the movie, read the book both are wonderful thankfully and remember to just Keep on Reading.

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