A review by alicejwhite17
Maggie-Now by Betty Smith

3.0

I started reading this book probably two years ago, maybe longer and I quit halfway through because I found the story boring. It did not measure up to A Tree Grows In Brooklyn probably because Maggie-Now is is all fiction. The story, for me, didn't get interesting until after where I quit reading. Maggie-Now is a generational story starting with Maggie's father Patrick Dempsey Moore. Patrick Moore is a lazy, pain-in-the-butt, Irish immigrant. He left Ireland because he refused to marry Maggie-Rose, after her brother Timmy threatened him. He comes to America and becomes a stable boy to Moriarty. Moriarty had a daughter named Mary and eventually Patrick married Mary despite the fact that Mary's father absolutely hated Patrick, Their marriage is pitiful and Patrick treats Mary terribly. Mary has a daughter and names her Margaret but her nickname is Maggie-Now. Maggie grows up and when she is sixteen ( I think), her mother gives birth to a boy but dies in childbirth. Maggie raises her brother because her father Patrick is a bitter angry man who takes little to no responsibility for anything. Her brother's name is Denny and Maggie raises him alone until he is ten, then she meets Claude Basset. Claude Basset is not a bad man, he truly loves Maggie but he is a born wonderer, being an orphan, and every spring leaves Maggie to go look for his birth parents. Maggie loves Claude, which is her one fault, and waits for him every year to come home in the winter, then she lets him leave again in the spring. They continue this strange relationship as Danny grows up and Patrick retires. Maggie desperately wants children but she never gets pregnant. Finally one spring she decides to become a foster mother, and a couple of years later her request is granted. Now she has children, but she still loses her husband every spring. Denny becomes a man and decides that he wants to be a butcher and marry his sweetheart Theresa. Claude misses the wedding and the christening of their baby. Patrick marries a widow, and leaves Maggie alone with the foster children. Claude comes home one winter night and tells Maggie that he is done searching because he found what he was looking for but the real reason was because he was sick and dying, Claude dies and Patrick scatters his ashes on the wind.
That sums up the entire book. The story just seemed slow, and Patrick's unreliable nature made a unlikable character. Everything he did made me angry and just wish he would die or disappear from the story so I didn't have to read about him. I liked the character of Maggie-Now because she was a simple person trying to live her life. She was a practical, plain, lovely girl who didn't deserve a husband like Claude. He treated her well, when he was around, but then he would just go and leave her.
There was not a lot of hope in this book. Francie (Tree Grows...) at least rose above her station, but Maggie-Now just stayed where she was, never really moving up in the world. I would hate to say anyone's life was boring but hers was. It is a story about Patrick and Maggie-Now and their lives are just boring. The little details maybe add some spice but while they are most certainly not flat characters they don't do much to improve themselves. I would expect this from Patrick but not from Maggie-Now. While she may be a plain and simple girl, she's not stupid. She could have done much better for herself but she chose not to, which doesn't make any sense to me.
I don't want to say anything bad about Betty Smith but the ending made me think either she got bored with the story as well, or she had a deadline. I suppose it ended because every story does end, but it wasn't a very satisfactory ending. It was rather abrupt with not warning. Claude dies, his ashes are scattered and that is that. As I sit here and think about it, there were some loose ends tied, but whatever became of Maggie? Was not a good portion of the book dedicated to her? And yet nothing is said of what happened to her after Claude died.
This book has some good points and some faults, and while it is not a bad story I wouldn't recommend it to people. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is another story.