A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe that I've gotten this far in life without reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; it has been one of those literary "aha" moments for me. It's an exquisite coming of age story that is deftly told with care and love. Author Betty Smith conjures huge amounts of detail without making the prose dense or laborious. More than almost any other book I have read, I easily pictured each character's face, gait, and mannerisms, just as easily as I pictured the streets, buildings, and storefronts in turn of the century Brooklyn--all without realizing that I was reading "descriptions." 

Smith's deftness led me to care about the characters in ways that I've hardly cared about fictional characters before. I'm generally not a maternal person, but I cared about Francie, the protagonist, in maternal ways. I constantly wanted to reach out and physically and emotionally guard Francie as she traversed the paths of poverty, discrimination, ignorance, family, relationships, and so many kinds of love. I wanted to shake other characters and scream, "There is brilliance and potential greatness in the girl you're overlooking!" Of course, if I could do that, Francie would never have traveled the difficult paths that allowed her to arrive on the cusp of realizing her greatness.

This is a permanent collection book.

View all my reviews