Before reading this book, I had seen the movie version several times. I was anxious to see how the book would stand up as the movie itself is so powerful. 
 This is the story of a group of men in an asylum whose lives are shaken up when a rowdy, gambling, fun-loving con man enters the ward and immediately begins to take over and break down the dictatorship created by Nurse Ratched. 
 I was surprised to find the narrator was Chief Bromden, the imposing Native American on the ward that is deaf and dumb according to the patients, nurses and doctors alike. 
 It was difficult at first to distinguish between what was actually happening, his frequent hallucinations and his use of analogy to describe happenings in the ward. I found his use of the Combine as an analogy for society's expectations particularly affecting, stating "The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is." 
 Descriptions of the characters and their individual plights were woven in with snippets of memories of their lives before the asylum. Because the story is told through Bromden, we are limited to what we find out about the characters, leaving us to fill in the blanks ourselves and ultimately saving us what would surely be some horrific and heartbreaking stories. 
 I felt like ultimately this was a story of redemption. Not everyone got there, but with the help of the character McMurphy, many of the patients saw a glimmer of good and of what their lives could be.