Readers' Review: "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-23/readers-review-tree-grows-brooklyn-betty-smith
Betty Smith’s first novel is an American classic – and an immediate bestseller when it was published in 1943. Smith drew from her own experience growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth century to create the character of Francie Nolan. It’s the coming-of-age story of a young girl learning to persevere – like the tree of the book’s title – and overcome the hardships of poverty. One of the first plainly-written novels about the lives of ordinary working-class Americans, it’s beloved as a story of what it means to be human. A Readers’ Review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Guests
Neely Tucker
staff writer for The Washington Post magazine; author, "Love in the Driest Season," a memoir of adopting a baby in Zimbabwe.
Deirdre Donahue
book critic for "USA Today"
Olivia Golden
Institute fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. and former assistant secretary for children and families, Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration
Comments
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I read this as an adult and wondered how I ever missed it along the way. What a great book and choice!
I am reading this book right now. I find that there are interesting themes in her book:
First, the omnipresence of the Catholic church. Its everywhere! Its rituals and laws dictate every moment of theirs lives. The reader has to ask why should it be a sin for someone who is starving to fast before communion? The mandate against birth control launches the Nolans into poverty with two babies within a year of each other.
Second, the temperance attitude toward alcohol. The authors painting of John Nolan seems straight from Carrie Nation herself. How his addiction spiraled the family into ever deepening poverty. His death, I think, liberates the family emotionally and economically and she proves that point by showing the family well fed, warm and stable until the end of the book.
Linda Hatfield-Southern
Chehalis, Wa.
American life was tougher then- no pepper spray- so more shootings.
and before full production power brought online for Soylent Green Industrial food program production
Soylent Green- more than jUSt poor people feeding poor people- no longer just for the hollow daze
Oh, for pete's sake.
I am 60 years old, and have always been a voracious reader. There have been only two times when I've found myself in tears with a book. The first, after the battle of Gettysburg in "Gone with the Wind" when Scarlett learned of the death of the Tarleton twins. The second is from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," when Frankie gets word from Lee Rhynor's mother that he's gotten married. After his comments about his engagement, his ambivalence about it and his intention to break it off, his marriage is a gut-wrencher.
Cathy Pinson
Boone, NC
I've probably read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn twenty times--I think I was 14 the first time I read it. I'm 30 now, and I still turn to the book for comfort--opening anywhere and re-living the story of Francie. It's beautiful and haunting, and I still feel like Francie is a friend I know well.
Rachel Stone
Greenport, NY
There are two books that defined my life as a reader, To Kill a Mockingbird and this book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Two books that I have read several times over my life and each time I find greater depth and discover new views of the world contained within each read. Yet my life as a child had seemingly few similarities, as I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire in a middle class world. To me this book transcends all and transports the reader to a world teeming with our strengths and weaknesses as humans. Thank you for bringing this to us and reminding us all of this wonderful book.
'The Biography of Betty Smith' by Valerie Row tells of Betty Smith's years as an adult--much of it in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It's a great read on the heels of "Tree" --you get a sense of how "Tree" compares with Smith's life...and the impact of her life as a child...
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was the first "adult" book I ever read; I pulled it form the shelf of my grandparents' house at age 10, the same summer I read Jane Eyre, and my grandfather asked if I had permission from my mother to read such books. I read it right through, cover to cover. Such a memory!
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was the first "adult" book I ever read; I pulled it form the shelf of my grandparents' house at age 10, the same summer I read Jane Eyre, and my grandfather asked if I had permission from my mother to read such books. I read it right through, cover to cover. Such a memory!
I loved this book--read it at least 3 times as a youngster. I grew up in New York in a very different situation from Francie, but she was familiar to me because in New York of the 1960s the immigrant experience was still very much in evidence.
When I read Angela's Ashes many years later it seemed as if it was a non-fiction account of a nearly identical story.
Hi Diane -
Just had to respond to your guest's comments regarding
Francie's dad - this book parallels my life so much -
we must remember that she was 50% her dad and
to belittle him would belittle her self esteem - and just
as important was the fact that his life as a child caused
him to be an alcoholic - when he died I was 13 and
alone with him - he had so many people at his funeral
they didn't have enough room for him - he was a
beloved man in the community even though his life
with us was hell. I loved him dearly.
changing the word drunk to sick is part of her training as a young author--she learns the power of the word from her mom in this way.
I read this book a few months ago..it was my bookclub selection. I thought the father was very like the father in Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes"......a lovable cad, terrible provider, adored by the children when they were young.
Interesting that here someone is celebrated for sending their child to a school system to which they are not entitled. In Ohio, a woman was convicted of a crime for that.
As a 1st generation immigrate, I was very moved when I read this book when I first got to this country. It helps me when I was struggling to finish college with not help from anyone,
Due in part to my love for this book, I have conducted a great deal of historical research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn about the social history of the neighborhood and the streets and places that Betty Smith highlighted in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In collaboration with local organizations, I offer tours that visit many of these places, including our church tour of Most Holy Trinity, the gorgeous cathedral-like church that is described in the novel which was also Betty Smith's parish; our Immigrant Foodways Tour which explores the history of pushcarts and takes you to the street where Francie bought pickles from a Jewish vendor; and our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour which goes past the site where Betty Smith once lived (today it is a housing project). If you'd like to explore the church, pushcarts, or immigrant history of Williamsburg on a visit to New York, please see our website at www.urbanoyster.com or contact me directly at cindyv@urbanoyster.com.
There are two things I always remember about the book. The first is when you read how Francine's mother always allows her children to to waste one thing. Francine's one thing is pouring the bitter coffee down the drain. You keenly feel her satisfaction as she does this and sense the ritual's importance to her. Her mother's message was simple, you aren't poor if you can waste one thing. It was her way of giving her children a sense of dignity no matter how grim their circumstances.
Another thing I remember is the star tin can in the darkest corner of the closet. It is were Francine's mother deposits any coins she has left over so that one day the family can purchase a piece of land. It is always such an impossibly hard scrabble to get coins to add to the can and to keep them there. Nevertheless, the mother keeps at it because according to her you are not anybody until you own a piece of land. It is so heartbreaking that when they finally reach their goal they do so by purchasing the father's grave. Wow, so terrible sad.
I went to NYC for the first time and independently or "inde" when I was 25 (1995), and I was AMAZED how crucially/culturAlly different it was "from" California. My parents left___ "their" old world-esque S.E. Wisconsin before I was born [atlanta ga] and dragged "me"!!! age 3 through central-america like a {1/2 IRI$H [Dad] 1/2 GERMAN [Mom]} badge of Manifest DestinY's pace.
My great-grand parents were "too good {and Educated!}" to stay in the N.Y. rat-race. But most of my girlFriends have looked through the "American" NY lace at some time and with compassionate geo-cultural grace -and the passion was indeed in their face. But california is a Mace-Disgrace, transplant-facebook, JUMPED! for that ace. OCCUPY California with a global embrace, vis'a'vis and face-to-face, Translating the secondary-chase, with liberty and just an ace. And the LOGGER'S near left-handER-Kurt Cobain's unhappy place? the pill-popping grunge diss-face, left coast the wrong place!!! Social fabric can be tragic, intervention will migrate like magic. Nevermind who's going at it.
And when I went to Ireland "inde" I saw the UNIVERSE, not in 1984 [the deepest score] but in 1999 with a sociological brine. The psychy-more will ENLIGHTEN US!!! to the core. and RETURN... the unloved to a NORMAL face. And "the capital of the world" can capitalize the information of compromise, with faux-3rd world GRACE.
by the law of man... US presume
was NOT the French translation called Les Miserables? Seemed same story -older settings - of human trial of survival.
required reading once for 'good' schools... AND in 'adult' section of library of course !
Exposure of children to fiction based on actual living conditions TO horrid to contemplate.
Actually allowing/ mandating children to continue to be raised in this manner of poverty STILL!!!- Good for business? Really?
O' come on... US old tired veteran USeless nut who USed to read too much as ailed as child with 'frail' mother and shellshocked Dad...
Look forward to tomorrow- FOOD/ meal !!! And then again NEXT month for Christmas- oh boy ! Thank YOU all from US(and especially from poor Tim). Dickens would be startled by electric and electronics but naught else IUHO
Before you invite Deirdre Donahue to appear on the program again, please ask her to review her style of speaking when participating in a discussion such as this. (It would be productive for you to listen and consider her style as well.) She constantly interrupts herself and rarely completes a sentence. It is painful to listen to her.