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White Oleander A Novel Janet Fitch 9780316182546 Books

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White Oleander A Novel Janet Fitch 9780316182546 Books

I was given this book from my 9th grade English teacher years ago. I was a foster child at the time. Now whenever I recommend a book to a teenaged girl who I see myself in I tell them this one. I ordered this for a friend. She is enjoying it.


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White Oleander A Novel Janet Fitch 9780316182546 Books Reviews

I found the language heavy and the psychology deep which made for a very interesting but slow read. I enjoyed the poetic sections, the vocabulary expansion, the impressive character development around Astrid and Ingrid, though I tend to prefer a slightly faster pace. There was nothing that made me really want to hurry up and see what happened - I was happy to just stroll along slogging through. And I am glad I did.
This book launched my foray into poetry. Janet Fitch's mentor is Kate Braverman, and you can see Braverman all throughout the book, if you are an avid Braverman follower. The lyrical prose of this book was creatively life-changing for me; the narrative and characters are so well-developed that it is truly, in my opinion, a masterpiece.
Haunting, deeply moving book.

This lovely, meandering epic coming of age story concerns Astrid and her mother Ingrid, who has been imprisoned for murder. Astrid goes through a handful of foster homes and all of the dysfunction that it entails.

At times this book is moving, at other times shocking, it ultimately attempts to answer the question why and how do mothers and daughters relate to each other? The depth of the writing is amazing for a "first" novel (Janet Fitch had actually been writing for at least a decade before this book was published).

The only part I found a bit distracting was Astrid, the narrator's habit of needing to make even mundane details sound poetic. I suppose it was done for effect, to show the way she thinks, but it was at times tiresome. Of course, at other times, it was lyrical and beautiful and the prose soared.

The subject matter can be shocking, as it includes explicit sexual descriptions, drug use and violence. it is never gratuitous, however, as it is intended to be an accurate portrayal of foster home life.

There are many, many messages here, as Fitch is ambitious and covers a lot of themes- loneliness, sex, mothers and daughters,class issues, the racial divide and how women are treated in modern culture. Los Angeles as a setting is the third most important character in the book.

Astrid's mother writes to her

"The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."

And Astrid thinks "I hated my mother but I craved her."

Complex.
What more is there to be said about Fitch's White Oleander that has yet to be already uttered? But in order to satisfy my own musings (read ego), I will give it the proverbial "college try".

A dark, lyrical and shimmering world, or "a landscape Van Gogh could have painted," is the reality in which our protagonist Astrid emerges and carries her scars (both literal and figurative). As other's have noted, Astrid is a complex and at times contradictory character, but whose teen-aged development wasn't? The crux of her struggle is not necessarily to escape the psychological clutches of her murdering poetess mother, whose ego parallels that of Philip Roths (!) and offers such sage wisdom as to "Taste his fear; it tastes just like champagne." Rather, Astrid's struggle is to internalize the numerous externalities acting upon her (i.e. the swath of foster parents) and sublimate them into an authentic identity that she may claim ownership to. As Astrid says herself, "People don't fit into slots - prostitute, housewife, saint - like sorting the mail. We are so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable water." It is watching Astrid's mutable and, yes, flawed progression toward the eventual reclamation of "own" self that makes this novel so compelling and her character "larger than biography".
This much acclaimed novel is almost 20 years old and I'm finally getting around to reading it-- fortunately, it still reads as quite contemporary. This is a story about the coming of age of a young girl with mommy issues...on steroids...and a story of a mother whose enmeshed attachment to her daughter is both sadistic and addicting for both involved. The toxicity of this familial bond thrusts the daughter, Astrid, into a multitude of conflicted relationships with both the men and the women she encounters in foster home after foster home when her mother, Ingrid, is imprisoned for murder. A murder that young Astrid had witnessed in the making. Yet the prison bars prove no barrier for the dangerous hold this complex mother has on her impressionable daughter who is battling her own demons in the revolving-door world of foster care. 

And finally, as has been said elsewhere (everywhere!), Fitch's prose are a delight to read. 
I was given this book from my 9th grade English teacher years ago. I was a foster child at the time. Now whenever I recommend a book to a teenaged girl who I see myself in I tell them this one. I ordered this for a friend. She is enjoying it.