Skip to main content

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

 



Published:  1999, Virago

Genre:  Fiction

Themes:  Lives of women, mother daughter relationship, love, survival

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤


If you have anything else that you really ought to be doing, such as: sleeping, caring for children, going to work or providing meals, I suggest you don't even attempt to read this book.  As soon as you start reading, it will suck you under and you will be lost in its depths until the school rings and asks if you are considering picking up your children today.

At the top level, the book is about the extraordinary relationship between young Astrid and her mother Ingrid, but as the story progresses it becomes clear that this book is really about what it means to be a woman.  Every aspect of female life is examined through the various characters, who range from those living in great comfort to those who scratch a living by whichever means they can.  In every life story there is a mix of good and bad, and those we might judge harshly in haste are often not the ones we should be wary of.

At the start of the book Astrid is 12 and her mother is a beautiful Scandinavian single mother who writes poetry and has a comfortable bohemian lifestyle filled with artists, musicians and writers.  She talks to Astrid as though she was already a worldly woman and has no time for anything or anyone that will not serve a useful purpose in her life.  Unsurprisingly, Astrid is a very bright and perceptive child who observes her mother's behaviour carefully, never daring to question her motives.  Ingrid would be a wonderful role model if she were not so cold and judgmental and it isn't long before her mean spirit twists into something more psychotic.
 
Without giving too much of the story away, Astrid has to be separated from her mother for all of her teenage years, and is sent to live in the American care system.  Most placements do not last very long, and as time goes on, Astrid has to learn to cope with the vastly different living arrangements of her various foster mothers.  Foster mothers can come from all walks of life and the children in their care just have to get by as best they can.  Astrid learns how to survive in the worst of circumstances, and Janet Fitch's observations of the various women are written in such carefully described detail that the reader is present in every home.  

There are parts of the book that are deeply shocking, and it is a hard fact that many children have had to deal with terrible things at the hands of those who are charged with looking after them.  That includes biological parents as well as foster parents.  For some children life will always be a daily battle that they should never have to fight.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Published: 2022, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: South America, family relationships, business My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If I ever tell my life story, I will take a leaf out of Violeta's book and make sure you understand that everybody loved me, and despite all sorts of questionable behaviour on my part, I leave the world as a winner. This is the story of a hundred year life.  Violeta is approaching the end, but before she goes she is determined to write out her life story for someone she loves dearly.  You don't get to know who that special someone is for most of the book, but that just serves to give the narrative a little twist. I didn't much like the character of Violeta but I understand that people who don't go round upsetting the apple cart don't make for very interesting stories.  With such a great time span to play with, Isabel Allende had plenty of scope for changing Violeta's circumstances and adding in references to world events to keep the reader...
Post a Comment
Read more

Holding by Graham Norton

  Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group.  It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end.  When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together.  Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

  Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤  If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel.  As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape.  Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...
Post a Comment
Read more