JimK:  DonnaK pushed me to read this, and I’m glad she did…

White Oleander (Kindle | Paperback) the story of a young girl named Astrid Magnussen with a mother who is...unique.  If I’m being kind.  A terribly sociopathic pretentious abuser would be a more accurate description.  Her mother is a poet, or fancies herself as one, and lives life on a level that her skill, fame and money cannot support.  None of that matters, and unfortunately neither does her daughter.  If her daughter can be a prop in the great play of Ingrid Magnussen’s life, then Astrid will be used that way.  If not?  Just ignore the child.

Mom does something serious and goes to jail. Astrid becomes a ward of the state and travels from home to home, growing up and trying to figure out how she sees the world, how she wants the world to see her and with every day that passes, seeing through her mother’s cloud of lies, pretense and verbal abuse.  What happens is not as important as how and why it happens, and Janet Fitch spends a lot of time making sure the reader understands the thoughts that run screaming through Astrid’s head.  We learn a great deal about how each home and family and friend she makes (or doesn’t make) affects how she develops. 

There’s a bit of Nabokov in Fitch’s writing, and not just because there is a Lolita-like passage.  The writing - all first-person from Astrid herself - starts out clunky, awkward, like someone who wants to write like a classic master but can’t.  Over time, as Astrid grows up, is exposed to other people and gets distance from her overbearing, pretentious mother, the writing changes.  It becomes more utilitarian and less poetic, yet just as vivid.  The writing transforms into (sometimes complex) sentences made up of simple, descriptive elements instead of overly-long, poorly done purple prose.  You can see these people, Astrid’s drawings, the houses she lives in...Fitch does a good job painting the mental picture you need to truly connect with this material.

If there is a negative to be said, it’s that the first chapter is hard to get through.  I think that is intentional.  There are cliched metaphors, contradictory elements, badly written sentences...I think all of these things are designed to teach you what constant exposure to her mother has done to Astrid’s young mind, how it shaped the way she thinks.

One other aspect that could be seen as negative is that it’s pretty depressing.  Ultimately you can (and I chose to) see it as uplifting in that Astrid survives some pretty horrible things and comes out the other side stronger and smarter.  Although she is (rightfully) wary of most people and still unsure of her place in the world, you get the feeling she’s starting to find it. 

Very interesting book.  Well crafted, with strong characters and a real sense of the places and things Astrid sees and feels.  If you read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn when you were younger and you want a more sophisticated, modern version of that story?  White Oleander (Kindle | Paperback) is the book for you.  If you ever spent any time in the care of the state, you will recognize the people and the situations in which Astrid finds herself.

You’ll also very much identify with Astrid if you spent your youth under the thumb of a domineering, overbearing parent.

From what DonnaK told me about the movie, I don’t know if I ever want to see it, good though it may be.  I really enjoyed the experience of this book and some the things that were changed in order to make the film are things of which I could not let go.  I would never give the movie a fair shake, not any time soon anyway.