White Oleander

** By Janet Fitch. Another book made famous by a movie, but I haven't seen the movie. My opinions will be set down untarnished by film!

Plot summary: Astrid is the daughter of troubled poet Ingrid who is imprisoned for murder. Astrid, barely an adolescent, is thrust into a series of foster homes, each stranger than the one before, until she reaches adulthood. Over the years Astrid's relationship with her mother evolves and Astrid herself manages to grow in spite of and, in some ways, because of the damage she has endured.

The book came off, to me, as a sort of modern Candide; Astrid stumbles out of one adventure into the next, constantly encountering new people with completely different outlooks on life, and she learns something from each one before eventually finding her own peace with the world. Of course, the problem is that I didn't necessarily want to make the connection to Candide, because it made Astrid's traipsing from home to home seem formulaic (though in the book's definite favor, I did not find it predictable!).

Another mark against White Oleander was that it lacked humor in favor of drowning in figurative language. I mean, I'm not asking for an old woman with only one buttock, but the mood was heavy, heavy, heavy. And as I do with many stories filled with so much tragedy and drama, I begin thinking more about the author (what she was thinking, what she really knows about the potential horrors about foster homes, etc.) than about the characters — and that's a problem.

All in all, however, it was fairly well-written and let's face it: melodrama makes a great page-turner. If you haven't been reading and have been feeling bad about it, why not try something that will suck you in? That's right. Go to the library.

Posted by Lisa on June 2, 2003 08:04 PM