3.5 Stars 
 Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, 
 Apple seed and apple thorn, 
 Wire, briar, limber lock 
 Three geese in a flock 
 one flew east 
 one flew west 
 one flew over the cuckoo's nest 
 A fascinating character and institutional study, taking place in a late 1950's psychiatric hospital. 
 McMurphy receives the focus of the blurb--as his charisma makes him frankly something of a show-stealer--but the story is really more about our narrator and sole POV character, "Chief" Bromden. Chief is a longtime resident of the mental ward, who's made a point of convincing everyone that he's deaf and mute. When McMurphy comes blazing onto the ward (in lieu of serving more jail time over his raucous behavioral tendencies), his blustery cunning captivates Chief's imagination and ignites a revival of will among the patient population. As McMurphy's antics disrupt the tight-fisted order of Nurse Ratched and her carefully groomed orderlies, a power struggle ensues. And through it all, Chief grows--changing and regaining himself through the catalyst of McMurphy's rebellious friendship. 
 To this reader, one of the most remarkable aspects of this story is the sinister depiction of nurse Ratched. In a sense, she is far sicker than any of the patients. The woman is a classic smiling sociopath--a master manipulator placed in a position of nearly unchecked domination over a group of vulnerable individuals. And she's willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the authority she's so carefully positioned herself into. 
 While Kesley's writing style isn't entirely my cup of tea (I sometimes got hung up in his tangential flow and lost focus), I very much appreciated the weight of what he did with this piece. He humanized the mentally ill during an era in which society was largely content to hide them away in sterile, prison-like setting--where they were then stripped of rights and dignity... and often subjected to function-impairing "treatments." The author's empathic realism holds its value in an admirably timeless manner. 
 Favorite Quotes: 
 "...psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind." 
 "He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered." 
 "If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite."