Everyone else hates this cover for some reason, but this is the edition of the book I read, so there it is. Deal with it.
Oh boy. 2 MONTHS. That's how long it took me to read this tedious chore of a novel. In the end, I suppose I'd say it was worth it. I feel accomplished, if nothing else. And I now belong to the group of people who can roll their eyes and commiserate with anyone in the middle of the book, desperately wondering what they've gotten themselves into.
This book is a classic example of the old "ends justifying the means" discussion. And it's hard to say what made the read so difficult. Maybe I was just hoping for a different narrator? A giant native american slipping in and out of reality is not the clearest of storytellers. And while I understand his existence is there to demonstrate the impartiality of the narrator, he was mostly just boring.
Or maybe I was hoping Nurse Ratched would get what was coming to her sooner? I think what I really wanted was a more evil Nurse Ratched. Because yes, she was a horrible bitch, but not in an evil, intent on ruining everyone's lives way. She really just liked things to be in clean and orderly and McMurphy was the embodiment of everything she hated. Nurse Ratched is the Queen of Mind Fucking, which, now that I think about it, is sort of the scariest kind of evil.
Worst book review ever. Meh.
