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A review by thelizabeth
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith
4.0
Speaking of the right text for the moment. You got it, Brooklyn.
I recently moved to Brooklyn (again), and I figured reading this was a good way to welcome myself. I'm glad I did that. I never read it as a child, though I couldn't say why.
And I don't know what happened, but I found myself feeling so sad whenever I started reading that I stopped and took a break for a while, which I have never done ever before with a book. I read other serious books all the time. So it was strange.
Essentially the problem went away the older Francie got, therefore the better bolstered she grew to the world and her sharp observations of it. She is rather wonderfully sentimental her whole life, but as a really little kid her highs and lows are just crushing. When no one wants to play with her; when she sees the free piano in their house AND HUGS IT and can't HUG IT ENOUGH; when she has to take the pretty doll, she just can't stand it, she can't stand it. I about died.
It's not even a very sad book, is the thing. It's an impeccably classic coming-of-age book, with everything that goes inside one, but it isn't deeply tragic. Francie's life is difficult (and hungry), and she absorbs a lot of grief, but she gets a lot of triumphs by overcoming it. She learns to be a really, really good person, in a world that's usually too cold for her. And half the novel's purpose seems to be the detailing of its setting (1910's Williamsburg), and filling it with shops and people and realness, not just the experiences of one girl. My expectation was always that this book is an idyllic time capsule about the good old days, but it's actually about being poor, and being surrounded by realistically iffy people.
Interestingly, for a book about a girl, almost all the people in it are adults. I really loved that. Instead of keeping her feelings about Francie's growing up to herself, the author put them all in a wide range of grown-ups who are watching her for different reasons. We learn so much about her family history, her aunts' lives, her parents' relationship. There's a lot of frankness about sex and death and birth. Altogether the scope goes far beyond the small distractions of childhood, unlike a lot of books of this kind. Her mother Katie is the second strongest character here, and is so complex she's sometimes difficult to love. ("She exchanged her tenderness for capability.") My very favorite was Aunt Sissy, and her naive way of standing up for things. I think her lucky, cunning intimidation of Francie's mean teacher was my favorite.
Francie's pursuits when she gets older are so lovely. She becomes interested in playwriting, which was almost too much for me, it's so sweet. There's a little conflict while she's learning about writing stories that are darker and truer than adults generally encourage little girls to write. At one point she finds she's writing fantasy to mask these themes, while still writing about hunger, and she gives up and feels she's failed. But I actually really like what she did, and I wished the lesson was that she could have victory this way.
When she's older, she gets in a complicated situation being stuck between work and high school, and throws herself into full-time jobs. These make her grow up, but instead of giving up her other ambitions she basically hacks her way into college, and any other kind of classes she can find and pay for. And it's awesome. I wished this part of the book were even longer, because it brought out so many interesting experiences and changes for her. Instead it kind of breaks down into chapters of paragraph-long vignettes for a while, and I'm not sure why. At some point the book shows that it kind of lacks unity, and that's a little disappointing. It's so close to having it all.
I also totally hated Lee right from the start. But I wasn't sure if I was supposed to. I was happy that the ending didn't involve a direct tie to a boy.
Francie's emotional relationship with Brooklyn through the book is completely great. There's a lot of exalting its gruff openness and crumbly nature. I like when she defends New Yorkese linguistically to her brother ("'Here in Brooklyn stood is like the past tense of stay'") because I feel totally the same way. There's a lot of sweet comments about the borough's universality (which is more true than ever, where I live). I love when her dad takes her up to have a view of the neighborhood and city and she tells him, "'It's pretty the same way pictures of in-the-country are pretty.'" Perfect.
.
Side note that this edition is kind of disappointing. The afterword is full of inaccuracies quite irritating to someone just having finished the book, and the illustrations are weird and... uh, bad. With the exception of the iconic little fire escape design on all the chapter numbers. I like that. But that dude cannot draw people, I'm sorry.
I picked up this copy at Half Price Books in Marion, IA for $2 last year. Good place.
I recently moved to Brooklyn (again), and I figured reading this was a good way to welcome myself. I'm glad I did that. I never read it as a child, though I couldn't say why.
And I don't know what happened, but I found myself feeling so sad whenever I started reading that I stopped and took a break for a while, which I have never done ever before with a book. I read other serious books all the time. So it was strange.
Essentially the problem went away the older Francie got, therefore the better bolstered she grew to the world and her sharp observations of it. She is rather wonderfully sentimental her whole life, but as a really little kid her highs and lows are just crushing. When no one wants to play with her; when she sees the free piano in their house AND HUGS IT and can't HUG IT ENOUGH; when she has to take the pretty doll, she just can't stand it, she can't stand it. I about died.
It's not even a very sad book, is the thing. It's an impeccably classic coming-of-age book, with everything that goes inside one, but it isn't deeply tragic. Francie's life is difficult (and hungry), and she absorbs a lot of grief, but she gets a lot of triumphs by overcoming it. She learns to be a really, really good person, in a world that's usually too cold for her. And half the novel's purpose seems to be the detailing of its setting (1910's Williamsburg), and filling it with shops and people and realness, not just the experiences of one girl. My expectation was always that this book is an idyllic time capsule about the good old days, but it's actually about being poor, and being surrounded by realistically iffy people.
Interestingly, for a book about a girl, almost all the people in it are adults. I really loved that. Instead of keeping her feelings about Francie's growing up to herself, the author put them all in a wide range of grown-ups who are watching her for different reasons. We learn so much about her family history, her aunts' lives, her parents' relationship. There's a lot of frankness about sex and death and birth. Altogether the scope goes far beyond the small distractions of childhood, unlike a lot of books of this kind. Her mother Katie is the second strongest character here, and is so complex she's sometimes difficult to love. ("She exchanged her tenderness for capability.") My very favorite was Aunt Sissy, and her naive way of standing up for things. I think her lucky, cunning intimidation of Francie's mean teacher was my favorite.
Francie's pursuits when she gets older are so lovely. She becomes interested in playwriting, which was almost too much for me, it's so sweet. There's a little conflict while she's learning about writing stories that are darker and truer than adults generally encourage little girls to write. At one point she finds she's writing fantasy to mask these themes, while still writing about hunger, and she gives up and feels she's failed. But I actually really like what she did, and I wished the lesson was that she could have victory this way.
When she's older, she gets in a complicated situation being stuck between work and high school, and throws herself into full-time jobs. These make her grow up, but instead of giving up her other ambitions she basically hacks her way into college, and any other kind of classes she can find and pay for. And it's awesome. I wished this part of the book were even longer, because it brought out so many interesting experiences and changes for her. Instead it kind of breaks down into chapters of paragraph-long vignettes for a while, and I'm not sure why. At some point the book shows that it kind of lacks unity, and that's a little disappointing. It's so close to having it all.
I also totally hated Lee right from the start. But I wasn't sure if I was supposed to. I was happy that the ending didn't involve a direct tie to a boy.
Francie's emotional relationship with Brooklyn through the book is completely great. There's a lot of exalting its gruff openness and crumbly nature. I like when she defends New Yorkese linguistically to her brother ("'Here in Brooklyn stood is like the past tense of stay'") because I feel totally the same way. There's a lot of sweet comments about the borough's universality (which is more true than ever, where I live). I love when her dad takes her up to have a view of the neighborhood and city and she tells him, "'It's pretty the same way pictures of in-the-country are pretty.'" Perfect.
.
Side note that this edition is kind of disappointing. The afterword is full of inaccuracies quite irritating to someone just having finished the book, and the illustrations are weird and... uh, bad. With the exception of the iconic little fire escape design on all the chapter numbers. I like that. But that dude cannot draw people, I'm sorry.
I picked up this copy at Half Price Books in Marion, IA for $2 last year. Good place.