Reviews - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

6.48k reviews for:

Really loved this book! I listened to it on Audible. I'll admit it was a little confusing in the beginning with so many people introduced. I almost gave up, but soon I figured out that Johnny (Father,) Momma, Francie and Neely were the real focus of the book. It is set in a different time. Early 1900s until WWI era. Momma's love and stern advice got them through everything they faced. She was a hard working woman who cherished her family and made many sacrifices for the people she loved. At the end of the Audible book, the narrator told her story of what she loved about the book and author, and how it had an impression on her life. That was a wonderful story too. I would read a memoir by the narrator.

I think I would enjoy going back and listening to this again.

kariiowo's review against another edition

4.0

emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Such a wonderful coming of age story. I feel like if you enjoy ‘Anne of Green Gables’ then you’d also adore this one. Every character in Francies family felt rich with life especially with their flaws in consideration. You can tell the author took plenty of inspiration from her own life experiences growing up.

I appreciated the simplicity of the writing because when a moment hit, it really hit. Same with the humour! I don’t have much more to say on this book aside from letting some of my favourite quotes speak for themselves;

“She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was of the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.”

“The child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.”

“She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams and took over hard realities in their place. Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.”

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”

“In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up."

“Francie couldn't understand why the heroine didn't marry the villain. It would solve the rent problem and surely a man who loved her so much that he was willing to go through all kinds of fuss because she wouldn't have him wasn't a man to ignore. At least, he was around while the hero was off on a wild goose chase.”

“Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman ... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have.”

"The difference between rich and poor," said Francie, is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.”

“Like sometimes I'm walking on the street and I think of someone I haven't seen maybe, in five years and I turn a corner and there's that person walking towards me." "I know," answered Sissy. "Sometimes I'm doing something that I never did before in my life and all of a sudden I have the feeling that I did that same thing before-maybe in another life. ..."

“But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things-or as a compromise, re-live rather than reminisce. She decided to fix this time in her life exactly the way it was this instant. Perhaps that way she could hold on to it as a living thing and not have it become something called a memory.”

"People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains-a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone-just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness."

“The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day.”

katharine2k's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lilli_29's review against another edition

5.0

Puberty is not a fairytale.
Betty Smith realised that and took that mindset into writing her book which came out greatly as a work of art. In many ways this book was very simple, yet contained so many struggles which is why i was so impressed by it.

Francie is a young girl growing up in brooklyn and facing the struggles a lot of non-wealthy people had to face in the early 1900s. Ups and downs and birth and death. She never lost herself though and always kept her original love for books in the back of her head.
Smart and wicked as she is, she can differentiate between real struggles and things that might matter once they’ve come past those.

What I love so much about this book is that Francie does not portrait the stereotypical teenager girl who gets depressed when she’s not being sorbed up in some sappy love story. Francie has faced difficult times but it made her realise the importance of family and the general idea of living by doing what is best.
I love Smiths ability to show the immense intelligence of her character and the realness and heartfelt love for things that actually matter.

Francie has inspired me in so many ways and although there were some bits that were a little hard to get through, the tree reminded me to not give up.

10/10 Recommend this one. It’s absolutely worth the 500 pages!!