Redheaded Reviews: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

While told in the third person, this book is seen through the eyes of the character Francie Nolan, daughter of Johnny and Katie Nolan and older sister by one year just about exactly, Neeley Nolan and much later, Annie Laurie. It is hard to describe what this book is about as it doesn't really have a plot. It is about the Nolan family who lives in Brooklyn from about 1906 to 1918. They live in three houses, having to move for various reasons usually because a family member has embarrassed them to their neighbors and they cannot face them anymore.

The other characters in the book include Katie's sisters: Evy who likes to talk and do impressions and is married to an unhappy milkman whose horse hates him and who plays instruments; Sissy who has been "married" three times and is on husband number three and has a tendency between husbands to sleep around. Technically she never divorced husband number one because they are Catholic and don't believe in divorce so she is a bigamist. She also has given birth to ten dead children; Granma Mary Rommely who teaches Francie the old stories from Austria and worries over her daughters.

Francie and Neeley pick up scraps of metal and rubber as children to take to the scrap yard for pennies. They keep half for themselves and give the other half to their mother who puts it in this metal star bank she created that is collecting money so that they can one day own some land and have a house of their own on it. This was something that Granma Rommley suggested that they do. Katie scrubs floors to pay the rent of their apartment while Johnny sometimes gets work as a singing waiter. He brings home his wages but drinks away his tips. Johnny is an alcoholic and a weak but handsome and charming man. Katie is a strong, sensible woman who never falters and will die before taking charity, but loves Neeley more than Francie and Francie will figure this out.

Francie wants to be a writer but has doubts about her work being any good due to a teacher at the school. She doesn't have any friends like Neeley does and spends her time lost in books reading one a day. I really relate to Francie because I too didn't have many friends growing up and I escaped into the world of books. I also had a younger brother that I looked over as she does Neeley.

Katie believes in education and since the children were little she had them read two pages from the Protestant Bible because her mother said that it would be better for them to read and the complete works of Shakespeare. Katie wants her children to stay in school all the way through college, but things get tight and they barely graduate eighth grade which is considered the end of elementary school. She needs one of them to keep working and she chooses Francie because she believes that Francie will find a way to get to college while Neeley won't and must be made to go to school.

While this book is autobiographical thinly veiled as fiction, some people will say that this book exemplifies the immigrant experience and racial slurs and stereotypes of the time as well as a look at the poverty and socioeconomic levels of society at the time. Perhaps it does that in its way, but mainly it's about a girl growing up in Brooklyn who is like the tree outside her house that they eventually chop down and try to destroy but it grows back. Nothing can keep Francie down for long she just continues to grow no matter what. Her roots, like that tree, are in Brooklyn. And maybe that's the real lesson to take from the story: to never give up, no matter what and keep hold of your dreams, they are something to reach for. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Quotes

Francie couldn’t understand why the heroine didn’t marry the villain. It would solve the rent problem and surely a man who loved her so much that he was willing to go through all kinds of fuss because she wouldn’t have him wasn’t a man to ignore. At least, he was around while the hero was off on a wild-goose chase.

-Betty Smith (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn p 462)

“Someday you’ll remember what I said and you’ll thank me for it.”

Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she’d have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them.

-Betty Smith (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn p 680)

“Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere—be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”