T.E. W. (terez93) reviewed on 11/4/2019 + 323 more book reviews

This book is quite perplexing, as it doesn't really follow a particular plot line. I think the best description comes from the foreword, which states that it's "not the sort of book that can be reduced to its plot line. The best anyone can say is that it is a story about what it means to be human. Indeed. It runs the gamut of the human experience: love and laughter, triumph, tragedy, all incapsulated in life's milestones, from birth, to marriage, to birth again, to death. It was one of the most popular Armed Services Edition books ever published, and thousands of copies were shipped to military personnel during WWII. It's seen both stage and screen adaptations in the wake of its monumental success.

It follows over the course of about six years, the story of Francie, her brother Neeley, her parents, and an extended cast of relatives and associates, including Francie's aunts and their families, or, in the tragic case of Aunt Sissy, lack thereof, as they negotiate the difficult life of an impoverished Brooklyn family. The tree is symbolic of Francie and by extension, the family itself, which, despite efforts to kill it, regenerates and regrows even stronger. Perhaps even more poignantly, it's a semi-autobiography of author Betty Smith.

The meandering story introduces readers to a rich cast of characters: this is one of the book's primary strengths - the character development, which is so replete with detail that it's likely that the fictional characters were based at least to some degree on real persons. Frail but determined Francie loves books, and uses her considerable imagination to attain her goals, including "assuming" the address of a home in a better neighborhood to escape her brutal, pedestrian institution for a much better school many blocks away. Her mother, Katie, encourages her, as she remained illiterate throughout her life. When Francie isn't able to complete high school, she begins college courses in summer and eschews a high school diploma at all to attain her goals, finding a way where the barriers are seemingly insurmountable.

This book is the polar opposite of the next one I read, Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, as it emphasizes the very American virtue of hard work overcoming just about any obstacle, as long as one adheres unwaveringly to their goals, a sentiment expressed in the words of many of the characters throughout the novel. Despite crushing poverty, alcoholism, illiteracy and a seemingly endless stream of disadvantages, including the death of Francie's father from alcoholism, a hardworking, determined Katie still finds a way to make it work, even if the path is a non-traditional one. Another primary theme is pragmatism and thriftiness, vital elements in the struggle for survival: the children gather and sell scrap metal for pennies to purchase coveted luxuries such as penny candies.

The one aspect I was rather surprised about was that the book ends on a rather haphazard happy note: Katie marries a fairly well-off retired policeman, who has had his eye on her for several years, even when her husband was still alive. Thus, Katie is "rescued" from her life of poverty, ensuring a much happier future for her now-three children, including a baby born after her husband's death, who will ostensibly never know the struggles endured by the other family members. The end was kind of a disappointment for me, however, as it seems an abrupt and somewhat unrealistic ending to a novel that revels in real life: the good, bad, and downright ugly. Overall, however, it's a charming novel that capably describes the lives of prototypical Americans from a bygone era, although many of the same challenges remain.

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Honesty is casting a bright light on your own experience; truth is casting it on the experiences of all.

There is here what is not in the old country. In spite of hard unfamiliar things, there is here-hope. In the old ounctry, a man ca be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. he may not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise-but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.

I knew not how to teach my daughtes because I have nothing behind me excepting that for hundreds of years, my family has worked on the land of some overlord. I did not send my first child to the school. I was ignorant and did not know at first that the children of folk like us were allowed the free education of this land.

The child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never ere. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age , have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.

"What's free about it if you have to pay?"
"It's free in this way: if you have the money you're allowed to ride in them no matter who you are. In the old country, certain people aren't free to ride in them, even if they have the money."
"Wouldn't it be more of a free country... if you could ride in them for free?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because that would be Socialism, concluded Johnny triumphantly, "and we don't want that over here."
"Why?"
"Because we got Democracy and that's the best thing there is."

"The men have all the fun and women, the pain."

"Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer for that terrible pain than just to be... safe... at least she knows she's living."

"I'll never get drunk again because I don't like to throw up."
"And she doesn't have to worry about me, either. I don't need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip-and this night."

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