One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ken Kesey (Penguin Modern Classics)

An absolutely gripping read. I went in knowing it was a classic, but I didn’t expect it to hit as hard as it did. The writing pulls you straight into the ward, and the characters feel so real you almost forget you’re reading fiction. McMurphy is larger than life, Nurse Ratched is quietly terrifying, and the tension between them is unbelievably well done. What surprised me most is how funny and heartbreaking it manages to be at the same time. One moment you’re laughing at the chaos, the next you’re sitting there feeling oddly emotional about people you’ve only known for a few chapters. It’s clever, sharp, and full of moments that make you stop and think. A brilliant, powerful story that sticks with you long after the final page.

Gripping read, very evocative and carefully written. I challenge anyone not to see Jack Nicholson though, the book, the casting, the film, hand in hand.

Can it really be 50 years since the publication of this book, I remember my first reading in the mid 70's and it has been a great pleasure, and a walk down memory lane, to once again make the acquaintance of the residents of an Oregon Psychiatric Hospital and in particular one Randle P McMurphy. Most people will remember the 1976 movie and the electric performance of Jack Nicholson as the audacious and colourful "Mack", in a movie that won many awards. The book has lost none of its magic even now reading the it so many years later, and the emotions that it can produce are still very real. McMurphy is moved to the mental institution from a prison farm where he was serving a sentence for the rape of a 15 year old girl. Although he is not mentally ill, he is hoping to avoid hard labour and serve the rest of his sentence in a relaxed environment. The life of the rest of the inmates is now turned on its head as McMurphy proceeds to wreck havoc in an attempt to control and alter the mundane existence of lethargic and inactive inmates...."We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psychoceramics, the cracked pots of mankind."....The only obstacle standing between Mack and his dreams is the formidable figure of the steely strict Nurse Ratched....."Her face is still calm, as though she had a cast made and painted to just the look she wants. Confident, patient, and unruffled."... The story is told in the first person through the eyes of one long term resident Chief Bromden a tall native American believed to be deaf and mute. Through a series of minor misdemeanours and coercion McMurphy is hoping to breakdown the stranglehold of power that Nurse Rached holds over the inmates, who are dulled and kept under control by the constant and daily consumption of medication. It would therefore appear that the prime function of the institution is to manage, by this use of drugs, the minds and temperaments of the residents, rather than try to rehabilitate them and reintroducing them back into society where they might once again make a useful contribution. If the use of drugs and stimulants fails to pacify the disturbed mind the institution is willing to apply electroshock therapy and in the most severe cases a lobotomy is performed. This is a book fully entrenched in the methods and institutions of its time. It is also a story of power and authority, those who wheel it and those who would attempt to question it by any means possible. It is a wonderful and colourful narration, strong and memorable characters, essentially funny yet ultimately sad. To me Randle P McMurphy is more than a comic figure, he chooses to question the reality and sense of his surroundings and by doing so set himself on the road to confrontation with the soulless Nurse Ratched and ultimately there can only be one winner, and an ending that is both shocking and captivating. Highly Recommended.

Kesey has written a memorable book. The storyline is redemptive. The characters are believable as the redeemed. The book has probably done more to change attitudes to mental health and its treatment than any medical school has. Irrational authority, as personified by the "Big Nurse", gets a drubbing. Brilliant!

I loved this book. It took me a long time to read it; to get through the slang American dialect, but it was worth it. McMurphy has to be one of my favourite antiheroes, as he is so complex and makes me realise just how subjective and changeable morality is. In fact, most of the central characters were extremely well developed and believable, never slipping into stereotype. I've read reviews claiming this is an anti-feminist story, about the emasculation of the American ideal, but I couldn't disagree more. Some stories have great female villains too - it doesn't always mean the author had an axe to grind with his mother. For me, this is a story of anti-establishment, pure and simple. It's even in the antagonist's name - ratchet [sic] - applying pressure slowly and non-aggressively, click by click, until something is locked firmly in its place. If gender does play any part in this (other than to create a realistic setting, being the 1960's), it's to build a carnal tension between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, and a physical threat transcending mere brute strength that she (and the rest of the Combine) are not equipped to deal with. I love any story that can make me question my own morality and make me see the world in more than just black and white, and that's exactly what this book did. It toyed with me. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest had me rooting for a violent, convicted rapist and conman, as saviour against a lonely middle-aged woman whose only crime was staunchly believing that what she was doing was right. It had me applauding him as he introduced gambling, alcohol, narcotics, violence and finally prostitution into an otherwise *pure* environment. This is a story we've heard many times before... McMurphy is the devil, Ratched is God, and the ward are the innocents tempted by evil into either freedom or sin, depending on your viewpoint... but told in such an intelligent and memorable way.

I had to think about things for a long time before I got round to deciding how to rate this book. There were moments while reading that I felt like it was a true masterpiece, and there were moments that I felt uninterested and quite confused. I have actually seen both the film and the play (both of which I loved) in action before reading, so I already had a very clear idea of how the story played out, but I don't think my feelings would be different if I was coming into reading the book with fresh eyes. Randle Patrick McMurphy was such a character and despite his obviously devilish, sneaky ways I fell for him as soon as he entered the book. Meanwhile, Nurse Ratched is probably one of the most terrifying villains I've ever come across in a book and I'm finding it tough to imagine any character ever beating her in this. Her calm, icy demeanour played off against McMurphy's fiery, quick-thinking personality perfectly and I adored watching them try to outsmart each other. These two were an example of perfect characterisation and I thought it particularly meaningful that the 'hero' was a conniving petty criminal, and the villain a supposedly charitable nurse who dedicates her life to 'helping' people. Chief Bromden was an interesting character but I wish less time had been dedicated to his slightly bizarre thoughts/memories and he'd had a little more to do. Kesey wrote well enough and built his world spectacularly also, but I'm afraid to say the overall message didn't wash so well with me. There is a lot of very racist, misogynistic language to be found in this novel and it has a very clearly symbolised anti-feminist tone that also conveyed a lot of hatred towards society as a whole. A lot of this was left out of the aforementioned film and play and so I didn't realise quite what I was getting myself into until I started reading. Although I think this book was cleverly written and did bring some brilliant moments to the table, it lost itself in the message it was trying to convey.

I bought this book 24 years ago when I was in university – a paperback with Jack Nicholson on the cover – but never got around to reading it. In those days, I had a side interest in beat and hippy writers and had heard about Ken Kesey through his association with the Grateful Dead. With the book collecting dust on my shelf, I saw the movie on TV and enjoyed it. I decided to finally read the novel after see footage of Ken Kesey being interviewed by Charlie Rose. It took me a while to warm to the story, but I came to like it and in places found it gripping. What amazes me most is that Kesey had it published when he was just 24. That’s incredible. It’s an extremely mature book for someone that young. Whatever stylistic issues Kesey has, he cleverly hides them by speaking through the narrator, Chief Bromden, an asylum inmate who’s been given so many pills and rounds of electric shock therapy that he sometimes sees the walls crawling with machinery, part of the apparatus that controls the world: the Combine. The section I liked best was the Chief’s description of being shocked, his characterization of his hallucinations and flashbacks to growing up on a reserve in Oregon, one which the federal government destroyed in order to build a dam. That part of the novel is brilliant. Indeed, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is really good – and all about oppression. The Combine is not precisely a hallucination. Rather, in a sense, it is real. True, you can interpret the novel in many ways. For example, it could be seen as an attack on quackery and classifying people who are different or troubled as insane (sort of like a fictionalized account of Foucault’s criticisms), or you could view it as metaphoric, i.e. Nurse Ratched as representing authority; authority that seems educated, civilized, and working in your interest, but which is actually moronic, corrupt, bitter, sexually repressed, brutal, and even lethal; an authority that rules through fear and retribution. Sound familiar? The Combine is more than the hallucination of the Chief, a former solider turned depressive. As a metaphor for the madness and injustice of society, I think the story is horrifying – and necessary. Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World and War Torn: Adventures in the Brave New Canada

Great book.Funny and tragic .