A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (2024)

Some books give young girls dreams of ponies, kittens, and visions of eternal love. This book is not one of them.

If I were to make a metaphor, this book would be the equivalent of the ice bucket challenge. It offers no platitudes, it is harsh, realistic. It slaps you in the face with reality, a reality that is very rarely pleasant.

And it is also one of the best young adult books I have ever read.

I first read this book as a young teen, perhaps when I was 13 or 14. The main lesson I learned from it: Life is not fair. Life is hard. Life is harsh. People suffer. Good things do not come to those who wait. Even if you're the best person in the world, life can still slap you in the face, and you can only take what fate has handed you.

Even if you strive to be the best child you can be to your parents, they can still show favoritism to your younger sibling, for no reason than the fact that your younger sibling was determined through some undetermined reason to be superior. Parents can and will play favorites, despite your best efforts.

Even if your mother works her hands to the bone to support you and your brother, you will secretly love your wastrel, drunkard of a father more, for unfathomable reasons. Because human nature doesn't always make sense, and you can't help who you love.

Even if you're committed to common sense, you will have your heart broken. People can and will take advantage of you, no matter how much you try to guard yourself.

This book is a bleak one. It is about a young girl named Frannie, a child born of desperately poor parents. A quiet child, a shy child, one who takes comfort in books. I think we can all relate to that. A girl mature beyond her years, due to the hardships of the poor Brooklyn life in which she grew up, but a girl who is naive, all the same.

She knew her family was poor, but little children never notice much of that. Her mother has to stretch a loaf of bread over an entire week, but there is magic in how she does it so that there is variety in their meals. She takes joy in playing with her brother, in getting a few pennies to buy a bit of candy at the dime store. In buying a pickle and reveling in the sourness of it. Simple joys that only children know. It is not until later in life that reality becomes all too clear.

Her neighbors are vibrant, colorful. Above all, they are people. They are human. This may be a silly thing to note, but not all books are about people, not all books have humans that seem human. Too many books have characters who are little more than typescript on a page. The people in this book seem alive, from the grumpy old man who yells at her down the street, to the sadly tragic woman who enters into a costume competition---and wins---for wearing what judges feel to be a symbolic dress with just one arm, not realizing that she is too poor to afford both sleeves, and the one arm is from a salvaged outfit.

If you wanted a true portrait of the people of Brooklyn in the early 20th century, you will find no better depiction in this book.

No, this book doesn't offer any rainbows, there are no daydreams. Not all little girls need constant beauty and joy and complacency. All girls, however, need a good dose of reality. They need to know that they, too, can survive and thrive, despite what life throws at them.

Because if a girl like Frannie can survive like a blade of grass sprouting from the hard concrete of Brooklyn, so can they.

"Dear God, 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."

"Don't say that. It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong."

"Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!"

"Well, a person can cry for only so long. Then she has to find something else to do with her time."

"I know that's what people say- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, you'll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget."

{Yup, I'm reading it AGAIN.}

I sob, and I mean sob, every time I read this book. It's such a simple story--Francie Nolan is a smart little girl who's trying to find beauty in her sometimes ugly, always poverty-stricken life. Her adored father is wonderful, but too plagued by his own demons to support his family. Her mother loves her children fiercely but is often harsh because she thinks it's her job to keep them grounded in reality (oh, and she seems to love Francie's brother more). Her aunt is a bit of a floozy, but is still kind and generous. Together, this family lives dirt-poor in Brooklyn. And that's it. But from this simple premise grows a tender, heartbreaking story. It's the only book that fills me with sadness just by thinking about it.

Also, this is another of those books that I fear will fade away. It's just not that flashy, and it is long. I'm always saddened at how much length plays a part in what my students choose to read. Please buy it!

Well, the tree grows very slowly and with exhaustive detail.

Couldn't get through this one. Actually, that's not entirely true. I could have. And I don't mean that in the way of a mountain climber who just couldn't make it to the top and then warps reality by looking back at it. No, it's more like "couldn't" as in "I couldn't eat another hashbrown from my McDonald's breakfast." Sure, I COULD have. It just didn't seem worth the pain.

I get why this book is a classic, I think. My brother and I argue about this all the time. He feels like it's important to watch a movie like Casablanca because it's historically significant to the medium of film. He makes the point that without Casablanca, there is no Ghostbusters (okay, he doesn't point to Ghostbusters, but he should if he ever wants to get any traction with ME). This book is definitely of interest as a historical document. An historical document(?) You know what, I'm not done talking about Ghostbusters, so we better stick with "a historical document."

The book is excruciatingly detailed about day-to-day life in Brooklyn during the early 1900's, down to what they had at the candy store. I sh*t you not, there's a page and a half describing the purchase of a pickle. The WHY of a pickle purchase. The best practices. The roles played by both seller and buyer. And here I am, enormous pickles in plastic sleeves of juice at every gas station in town.

What I'm saying is, this is a great thing to have as it records what was happening in that time period, and also records the day-to-day life of a family that's just this side of poor. Not a war, not a huge event. Just what happens at your average Brooklyn pickle place.

So I get why it's important, but that doesn't mean I want to read it. My brother would tell you that without Casablanca there is no Ghostbusters, and I can't disagree with that. But I like Ghostbusters. I don't like Casablanca. And with books and movies we're lucky enough to be in an age where there is more good material out there than people can consume in a lifetime. I am wholly convinced that I will never read every book that I would truly enjoy, which is messed up. Really messed up. But it's true, and that means there's really no time to waste on something that, though not terrible, just isn't doing much for me.

“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first time or last time: Then your time on earth will be filed with glory.”
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ~~ Betty Smith

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is an amazing piece of fiction & one of those books that stays with you long after you've read it.

This was Betty Smith’s first novel and it is an American classic; it was an immediate bestseller when it was published in 1943. Smith drew from her own experience growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth century to create the character of Francie Nolan. It’s story of a young girl learning to persevere – like the tree of the book’s title – and overcome the hardships of poverty. One of the first plainly-written novels about the lives of ordinary working-class Americans, it’s beloved as a story of what it means to be human.

But A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is much more than a coming of age story. Its richly-plotted narrative of three generations in a poor but proud American family offers a detailed and unsentimental portrait of urban life at the beginning of the century. The story begins in 1912, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where eleven-year-old Francie Nolan and her younger brother, Neeley, are spending a Saturday collecting rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other scrap to sell to the junk man for a few pennies. Half of any money they get goes into the tin can bank that is nailed to the floor in the back corner of a closet in their tenement flat. This bank, a shared resource among everyone in the family, is returned to time and again throughout the novel, and becomes a recurring symbol of the Nolan's self-reliance, struggles, and dreams.

Those dreams sustain every member of the extended Nolan family, not just the children. Their mother Katie scrubs floors and works as a janitor to provide the family with free lodging. She is the primary breadwinner because her husband Johnny, a singing waiter, is often drunk and out of work. Yet there is no dissension in the Nolan household. Katie married a charming dreamer and she accepts her fate, but she vows that things will be better for her children. Her dream is that they will go to college and that Neeley will become a doctor. Intelligent and bookish, Francie seems destined to fulfill this ambition - Neeley less so.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) her own pragmatic nature, Francie feels a stronger affinity with her ne'er-do-well father than with her self-sacrificing mother. In her young eyes, Johnny can make wishes come true, as when he finagles her a place in a better public school outside their neighborhood. When Johnny dies an alcohol-related death, leaving behind the two school-aged children and another on the way, Francie cannot quite believe that life can carry on as before. Somehow it does, although the family's small enough dreams need to be further curtailed. Through Katie's determination, Francie and Neeley are able to graduate from the eighth grade, but thoughts of high school give way to the reality of going to work. Their jobs, which take them for the first time across the bridge into Manhattan, introduce them to a broader view of life, beyond the parochial boundaries of Williamsburg. Here Francie feels the pain of her first love affair. And with determination equal to her mother's, she finds a way to complete her education. As she heads off to college at the end of the book, Francie leaves behind the old neighborhood, but carries away in her heart the beloved Brooklyn of her childhood.

No matter your age or your place in life the rich prose A Tree Grows In Brooklyn will fuel your dreams and bring joy to your heart as you are transported to another time.

طالما كان جوابي علي سؤال : (ما هي روايتك المفضلة؟) هو أن لم يخطر اسم معين ببالي بمجرد قرائتي للسؤال، و لذلك يمكنني القول أني لم أجدها بعد.

******************************

26/7/2016

في عامي الثاني و العشرين
شجرة تنمو في بروكلين روايتي المفضلة.

فرانسي نولان أجمل فتاة في العالم، أحبك.

During my adolescent years a short run program on television was Brooklyn Bridge, a show about life in Brooklyn during the 1950s. The last line of the show's theme song was "that place just over the Brooklyn Bridge" will always be home to me. When I think of Brooklyn, my mind goes back to a more wholesome time when city children could stay out late and parents did not have to worry about their well being, where children frequented the penny candy store and rode on paper routes after school. This was the Brooklyn of the 1950s, yet by immersing myself in Betty Smith's timeless A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for two days, I entered into an environment that was both wholesome and dangerous and a perfect setting for coming of age: the Brooklyn of the 1910s.

Francie Nolan was born December 15, 1901, the eldest child of Johnny and Katie Nolan. The Nolan parents may have been born in Brooklyn, but both only had an eighth grade education and had been working in factories from the time they were fourteen. By the time they married as older teenagers, the Nolans were relegated to a life in the tenements, living paycheck to paycheck. The only way they could afford their apartment was through Katie working as a janitress in the building. Here is where we first meet Francie, age eleven, a girl who her grandmother Mary Rommely noted was destined for a special life.

As Francie and her brother Neeley, aged one year younger, came of age they had to endure many hardships. Between Johnny's drinking and Katie's meager earnings, there was no telling where the family's next meal would come from. Yet, Katie persevered because she wanted her children to have a better life than the one she had. She had Francie and Neeley read a page of the Bible and a page of Shakespeare each night before bed, and exchanged her work as a janitor for piano lessons from two spinster women who lived downstairs. Between this self-education and Johnny's constant lessons in civics and politics, the Nolan children had more education than their parents ever had.

One place that was free was the public library. Francie was determined to read one book a day for the rest of her life. Through reading she uplifted herself from the rest of her neighborhood despite the extreme poverty in which she lived. Katie taught her children to be proud of their station in life and never accept charity. Through hard work, religion, and education, the next generation would endure. I thought these messages were timeless, as well as the sisterly chats between Katie and her sisters Sissy and Evy, which eventually grew to include Francie when she reached her teen years. Girls grew up fast then, a girl frequenting the library one day, to a teen working in a factory the next. I thought Francie's exchanges with Katie and Sissy about life were especially poignant, as I watched Francie grow up before my eyes.

Betty Smith was born December 15, 1896, five years before Francie Nolan. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was her first novel, and an autobiographical account of her life until she left for college. It generated much acclaim, even initially, because as writer Anna Quindlen points out in her forward, that no matter what station in life you are in, a person can see oneself in Francie Nolan. Perhaps if I had read this book when I was eleven, I may have thought this way. Yet, by reading this classic for the first time as an adult, I found it to be a charming, historical fiction, coming of age story; however, not one that left me bawling and would change my life. For an adolescent girl reading this for the first time, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would be a special experience.

As Francie is about to leave her childhood behind, she points out that Brooklyn is a special place, not like New York, and one has to be from there to understand it. These sentiments echoed Quindlen's writing, as I came to experience the magic of early 20th century Brooklyn. Betty Smith ties up her ending happily because this is what happens in the first part of her life. She would go on to be a novelist and playwright, and a reader can expect the same bright things for Francie Nolan. For an eleven year old girl, reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a magical experience and sure fire five star read. As an adult, I can appreciate the life lessons learned as well as the timeless of the setting. I enjoyed my time with Francie and her family and rate this classic 4.5 shining stars.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a quiet, gentle, understated and yet at the same time unexpectedly scathing at times book that offers a window (or a view from a fire escape, if you please) into a little corner of the world a century ago, and yet still has the power to resonate with readers of today.

After all, the world has moved forward, yes, but the essential human soul remains the same, and the obstacles in human lives - poverty, inequality, cruelty, and blind self-righteousness - are in no danger of disappearing.

"The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts."

It's not easy to answer what this book is about, to answer it in a way that would manage to capture the heart and soul of this story. If you ask me, I think it's a story of people simply being people, the good-bad-and-ugly of humanity.

There are so many things coexisting in the pages of this not-that-long book. On one hand, it's a classic coming-of-age and loss-of-innocence tale centered around the experiences of a young girl growing up in Brooklyn in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. On another hand, it is a social commentary taking on the uglier parts of human lives and human nature - the parts that Francie was cautioned against writing about as they are quite 'sordid': poverty, vice, exploitation, intolerance. On yet another hand (yes, I'm running out of hands here) it's a story of American dream - hopeful and determined.

“I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.”

It is also a story of opportunities lost and opportunities gained despite the odds. It's a story about the will to survive no matter what, about iron-clad will and determination, about hope despite the odds, despite being, for all intents and purposes, on the bottom of the barrel. It's a story about learning to love and respect and compromise and give up - and frequently all at the same time. It's a story about being able to open your eyes to the world around you as you grow up and learning to see this world for what it is, and accept some of it, and reject some, too. It has love and loss and pain and happiness and wonder and ugliness - all candidly and unapologetically presented to the readers allowing them to arrive at their own conclusions just as Francie Nolan has arrived at hers.

Apparently when this book was published in mid-1940s, it caused a wave of disappointment and disagreement with the subject matters it raised, the subject matters that some of the public, like the well-meaning but clearly clueless teacher Miss Garnder in this book, probably found too 'sordid' for their taste: the poverty, the pro-union message, the lack of condemnation of female sexuality, the alcoholism, the treatment of immigrants unfamiliar with their rights, the exploitation of the poor and weak ones by those in power - you name it. It seems there was too much of the social message presented with not enough of polishing it and coating it with the feel-good message.

"In a flash, she saw which way the wind blew; she saw it blew against children like Francie."

"She had been in school but half a day when she knew that she would never be a teacher’s pet. That privilege was reserved for a small group of girls... girls with freshly curled hair, crisp clean pinafores and new silk hairbows. They were the children of the prosperous storekeepers of the neighborhood. Francie noticed how Miss Briggs, the teacher, beamed on them and seated them in the choicest places in the front row. These darlings were not made to share seats. Miss Briggs’s voice was gentle when she spoke to these fortune-favored few, and snarling when she spoke to the great crowd of unwashed."

Allow me to quote Terry Pratchett here:

-"Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger."
"And that which *does* kill us leaves us dead!"

"They think this is so good," she thought. "They think it’s good— the tree they got for nothing and their father playing up to them and the singing and the way the neighbors are happy. They think they’re mighty lucky that they’re living and that it’s Christmas again. They can’t see that we live on a dirty street in a dirty house among people who aren’t much good. Johnny and the children can’t see how pitiful it is that our neighbors have to make happiness out of this filth and dirt. My children must get out of this. They must come to more than Johnny or me or all these people around us."

“But poverty, starvation and drunkenness are ugly subjects to choose. We all admit these things exist. But one doesn’t write about them.”
“What does one write about?” Unconsciously, Francie picked up the teacher’s phraseology.
“One delves into the imagination and finds beauty there. The writer, like the artist, must strive for beauty always.”
“What is beauty?” asked the child.
“I can think of no better definition than Keats’: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’”
Francie took her courage into her two hands and said, “Those stories are the truth.”

This book is simply written and slow-moving - but in an enchanting, engrossing way that allows the characters to shine through its pages.

"Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way."

“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.”

Loved it from page 1

Slow paced and really descriptive but I loved it.

I really enjoyed learning about life back then for the Nolans
Highs and lows of life and daily experience

I was so emotionally attached to Francie. She was a brillant character and I loved her to pieces

I had heard of this book quite frequently, but for some reason or another never picked it up.

Then years ago, my book club decided to read it. What a Joy! What a Pleasure! I loved reading about this young girl who loved to read as much as I did. How I could relate to her love of going to the library and finding that special book - that treasure! Thus, this book became my treasure. It holds a place on my favorite book list!

Francie Nolan is a very poor young girl living in the slums of Williamsburg. Her father is an alcoholic who breezes in and out of their lives. But in Francie's eyes he is a prince. Children often do not see their parent's flaws or perhaps they have the gift of overlooking. She has her father's heart and desperately tries to capture the heart of her hardworking, often harsh, Mother. Her life is rough. She is a girl who loves to look out her front window on Saturday nights, who loves the chalk and short pencils brought home to her. She finds pleasure in the things she can, while enduring hardships such as no or little heat, lack of proper food, loneliness, assault and loss. She has an interesting Aunt who always has a "boyfriend" My grandmother would call her a harlot. I would also call her loving and kind to her niece and nephew.

This book stirs the emotions of the reader. There is sadness in this book but there is also survival, hope, strength and determination. The character try their hardest. They are flawed, make mistakes, but always try to do the right thing.

Beautifully written book.

See more of my reviews at www.openbookpost.com

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a semi-autobiographical 1943 novel written by Betty Smith. The story focuses on an impoverished but aspirational adolescent girl and her family living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, during the first two decades of the 20th century.

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident.

The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family contentedness in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه آگوست سال2012میلادی

عنوان: درختی در بروکلین می‌روید؛ نویسنده: بتی اسمیت؛ مترجم: کیومرث پارسای؛ تهران: هنرکده‏‫، سال1390؛ در508ص؛ شابک9786009245734؛ چاپ دوم سال1391؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

کتاب «درختی در بروکلین می‌روید»؛ رمانی نوشته ی «بتی اسمیت» است، که نخستین بار در سال1943میلادی منتشر شد؛ این رمان آمریکایی کلاسیک و بسیار دل انگیز، درباره ی بزرگوار شدن دختری جوان، و داستانی گزنده و تکان دهنده، و سرشار از مهربانی و بیرحمی، خنده و ناراحتی است، و زندگیها، شخصیتها، و رویدادهای هیجان انگیزی را، در ورقهای خویش جای داده است؛

داستان دختری جوان، حساس، و آرمانگرا، به نام «فرانسی نولان»، و سالهای تلخ و شیرین و سرنوشت ساز زندگیش، در زاغه های «ویلیامزبورگ»، برای بیش از هفت دهه است، که میلیونها خوانشگر را به وجد آورده، و الهامبخش آنها بوده است؛ تجربه های روزانه ی خانواده ی فراموش نشدنیِ «نولان»، با صداقت و جذابیتی کم مانند در اثری ادبی به نگارش درآمده، که به شکلی درخشان، زمان و مکانی ویژه به همراه لحظاتی بسیار ناب، از تجربه های انسانی، با واژه ها به جلوه درآمده است

نقل نمونه متن (نیاکان من خواندن و نوشتن بلد نبودند؛ پدران آنها نیز سواد خواندن و نوشتن نداشتند؛ پدر و مادرم هم به مدرسه نرفتند؛ با این حال، من، «فرانسی نولان»، به کالج میروم! میشنوی، «فرانسی»؟ تو به کالج میروی؟ آه خدای بزرگ!)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/02/1402هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

My story of this book. I never read this back during my school days though I was probably given the opportunity. I had two elective English classes where we were given a choice between three books, this was probably one but I chose another. Sometime within the passing years I bought a copy and put it in the book shelf that is next to my television, where it has stared at me for years, subtly asking ng is it my turn yet? When my friend Brina said she was reading this book and did anyone want to read Al ng with her, I looked at the book and thought, go for it. It was finally this books turn. I opened the page.....

Started reading and fell in love with the story of Francie and her family, living in Brooklyn during the early 1900's. Kate her mother, a very strong woman who worked extremely hard, Johnny her charming, hard drinking Irish father and her brother Neely a short year younger than herself. Francie was a remarkable character, how she thinks, the special love she had for her father, who despite his drinking managed to be there when she really needed him. We read as this family weathers changes in livelihood, living conditions and the many changes taking place in the world.

Although it was Brooklyn it could have been my neighborhood in Chicago, sixty years later when I was growing up. Somethings had changed, my neighborhood was Irish, Polish and Italian and instead of being secluded but ethnicity we all played together, in the streets sidewalks and alleys. If there was any division it was between those who were Catholic and went to Catholic school and the public's as we called them, who did not. There were still corner stores and our mothers not driving, we were often sent to the stores. Hard drinking Irishmen, we had those too, the ones who closed the bars and walked home weaving but singing. This book was so easy to identify with, the characters so realistic, well, I was smitten, wanted good things to happen for them. The one thing that has changed from back then that I envied them for, was the closeness of families, where everyone worked together, remained close. We don't have this anymore in this global world and that's a shame imo.

Would I have appreciated all the nuances of family life within this story, the struggles they went through if I had read this when I was in school, I think not. I think reading this as an adult I was more able to identify and understand what each decision cost them, how hard they fought for survival. I think I read this at the perfect time, plus now it is no longer staring at me unread.

The tree that grows in Brooklyn isn't really about Brooklyn at all. It's an encapsulation of the experience of the immigrant, with the first generation American-born as astonished observer. And liver. From the eyes of ever-evolving Francie, who writes about it all, writing herself out of nightmarish situations (deaths, hunger, & a sexual deviant that lingers in the hallways) and childhood idylls (trips to the candy store... & feeling validated, loved, cared for). She describes things that are funny & tragic at once; because she survives the story--this is a loose autobiography, infused, no doubt, with the novelist's godly fictions--we end up loving her. &, implicitly, we fall in love with family, childhood, life, fiction, history. Even our own America.

Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is - cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'"

The title of this novel refers to a tree that grows persistently up through the concrete and harsh conditions of a poor tenement neighborhood in early 1900s Brooklyn. But it is also a metaphor for the novel's protagonist, Francie Nolan. She is a sweet, innocent girl who grows and flourishes despite a harsh environment of neglect and poverty.

I fell in love with Francie. I loved her childlike innocence and the way she could be so delighted with things we take for granted: things like a flower in a brown bowl, freshly sharpened pencils, dancing shadows on her pillow, shiny stars. I love her pluckiness; I loved the way she refused to conform to the mold her teacher tried to force on her, the way she pulls herself out of poverty by working hard, even though it means giving up on some dreams.

But the novel is about so much more than just Francie. This is a beautifully moving portrayal of the human condition and the plight of the downtrodden, similar to the work of Steinbeck, though more hopeful. There is so much American pride coming from the point of view of poor immigrants and their children. The heroes of this book are not great men. They are ordinary people. They are flawed. And they are beautiful.

I just want to hold all of them tight until they holler out, "Let me go! Let me go!"

I felt like the last person in the world to have read this book, and based on what everyone has said about it over the years, I expected this to be the next best thing after the Crispy Potato Soft Taco at Taco Bell. But as I read the first 200 pages, I thought everyone was out of their freaking minds. This, I thought, is what everyone has been raving about for as long as I can remember? I even did a quick peek at my GR friends list - you people love this book. I couldn't figure out why.

It started coming together for me somewhere after the 200-page mark. Things actually started happening, and the chapters weren't just excuses to explain some sort of mundane aspect of Francie's life. I don't need a lot of melodrama in my literature, but there needs to be some sort of conflict. Some sort of obstacle to overcome. Some sort of tension. This book lacked that for a good portion of the story.

When things did get interesting, I started to understand why so many people love this book. Personally I don't love it. It didn't make me weep, though I admit to tearing up maybe once. I think this is another one of those books that I should have read when I was much younger to have a full appreciation for this coming-of-age novel.

I can appreciate it for what it is. But it didn't change my life.

Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" has been passed down through at least three or four generations and is highly regarded as a classic novel perfect for any young adult bent on entering adulthood and escaping from the gaping clutches of a complicated childhood.
While it was not for those reasons that I first picked up "Brooklyn," I came to regard it as one of the finest books that I had ever read. At first glance, it is a very deceitful book: short; words spaced nicely apart; and, a largish font size. However, as I began to become more enveloped in the life of a young Brooklyn girl dreaming of becoming big, I realized that this tale was not as easy as the superficial first glance had led me to believe.
For one, Francie's sufferings and trials from being the unloved child gave me a special, odd sort of comfort. If she could survive-no, flourish-living in the slums of Brooklyn with a drunk Irish father and a mother who was not always there for her, why could I not do so in absolute comfort? (Granted, my father is not a drunk, nor is he Irish; and my mother is always there for me. Still, as every young adult feels at one point during this trying time, I have often thought that there was no one to whom I could turn for steady support)
Secondly, Betty Smith wrote the novel in a fluid, page-turning manner. Her every word supports and encourages the next, while also performing the duty of enticing the reader to keep marching onward. She writes simply and plainly, a very modern woman in a time where their position in society was shifting.
She created in Francie a heroine worthy of comparison to Jane Austen's beloved Elizabeth Bennet or Elinor Dashwood. Bold, daring, smart, and at the same time reserved, wise, creative, and thoughtful, Smith wrote a protagonist not only for the shifting ways of the early 20th century, but for all time.

In 1943 the average Caucasian American still believed that people of other races were contaminating swimming pools and public restrooms with their skin and that women of all races were second-class citizens. Out of this backdrop stepped a skinny white girl from Brooklyn who managed to publish a ridiculously modern coming-of-age novel and introduced the world to Francie Nolan.

As well-read as I am, I had not met Francie Nolan until this week of my life, and I feel a great regret for not knowing her sooner. Francie Nolan is a life-changing character and this is a life-altering book. I can honestly say that, as much as I loved it, it is not a book I would hand to my husband or son, but I would hand it to any woman over the age of 15.

If you can't relate to Francie Nolan, I would go out on a limb and guess that you have lived an enchanted, near-perfect life. You don't need to have been poor to relate to Francie, you could have been any of the other following things: a daughter of immigrants, a daughter of an alcoholic, a girl who sometimes struggled relating to her peers, a dreamer, a girl.

This is a staggering, near-brilliant work of fiction and it has left me with scenes that I will potentially remember the rest of my life. I had tears running down my face throughout several parts, and during one scene in particular, when a mob of angry mothers get their hands (or rather their feet) on a criminal, I found myself shouting out, "GET HIM!" and wishing I had been with them to obliterate the beast.

What you have here is a great and rare celebration of what it means to be a girl. Girls face danger and inadequacies and meanness everywhere, but through powerful aunts who go marching into schools to defend nieces, mothers who take on 2nd and 3rd jobs to cover up for fathers who fail to launch, and grandmothers who make sure their grandchildren are not embarrassed by their imaginations, they can learn that they can make it in this world, and thrive.

This book is like a blessing. It has certainly blessed me.

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

Catching up…

My neighbor said to me…

“Would you like this book for the Little Free Library Shed?” She handed me this 1947 version with illustrations. A broad smile crossed my face. How could I not accept it? This book that had touched so many lives, including mine, as a child when I first read it. Hugging her for the gift, I told myself I too must revisit this classic, this amazing tree, our protagonist Francie and early Brooklyn.

And then…

I would share it with the neighborhood.

The story begins on a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1912 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where a tree called the Tree of Heaven grows outside the tenement houses. This story follows a young girl (Francie) as she grows up and follows her ambitions, while also detailing a life of poverty and the importance of family.

It is…

A classic beautiful coming of age story that shares how hard work and perseverance guide Francie through life.

And…

Even though Francie started her life with poor immigrant parents, and difficult circ*mstances, she manages to find her way through education and strong female influence.

In a long-ago interview, Smith shared…

“I grew up wanting to protest in some way against intolerance. …the beginning of this novel really started when, as a child, I began to notice the world of Brooklyn around me.”

This book is…

Character-driven. Sentimental. Emotional. Funny. Inspiring. Insightful. Heart-felt.

Interest level: Grades 9-12 - although look at me, reading it again as an adult!

مخطئ من يظن أن لدينا حياة واحدة لنعيشها، مادامت هناك روايات مثل شجرة تنمو في بروكلين

Read concurrently with my son. They don't do characterization like this anymore. Rich, multi-layered, and ultimately a song of hope. One of my fave reads of recent years.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a beautiful novel that resonated with me. This was a timeless classic that was first published in 1943, but I still could relate to Francie Nolan in this coming-of-age novel at the beginning of the twentieth century. I am just so sorry that it has taken me so long to read this beautiful book and to meet Francie Nolan. I related to her experiences throughout and it moved me as so few books do. I loved the trips each week to the library by Francie as she systematically attempted to read all the books in the library, and at the same time, she was enthralled by the brown vase that always had the flowers of the season. You have to love the metaphor of the tree growing in the concrete as Francie's favorite time was reading out on the fire escape in the shade of the tree. As we come to know all of the Nolan family, we become immersed in the immigrant experience. There is a reason that some books stand the test of time, and it may be the universal truths that we all share. Francie Nolan, I will never forget you, we shared a lot, albeit in different times.

"Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way."

"OH, MAGIC HOUR WHEN A CHILD FIRST KNOWS IT CAN READ PRINTED WORDS!"

"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day, when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."

"A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grown towards the sky again."

I love this book. The character were so colorful and full of life. It's described so we'll that I feel like I lived there too. No wonder it's a classic. I can't believe it took me so long to read it.

This feels autobiographical. It does seem to be based off the childhood experiences of Betty.

The beginning went into the history of the Nolan family and I'm sure this set the stage, but it dragged and I almost stopped reading. I felt like it took forever to read this book. It was worth it. The story does grow inside you somehow. This is not the usual genre I read.

I also found the first 3/4 of the book very very stressful. They lived poor and there was a stress always about where the money was going to come from. It's good to step into those shoes, but it's still stressful reading for me. They are some tough people. Being a student, living on loans, I have all kinds of fears about money right now and I think this novel tapped into those fears about my future. I gotta move.

Francie is our protagonist. She lives in the poor parts of Brooklyn to Irish parents. They are tough. Her mom wants her to have an education to make something of herself and get out of poverty. She makes Francie read some Shakespeare or the Bible every day of her life. The mother does her best to help Francie get ahead in this world in her way.

Francie learns she enjoys writing. Where the story really took off for me was the exchange between Francie and her teacher. There is a passage that gave me chills it was so powerful. Francie's father has died and instead of writing her fun and fanciful fluff for her teacher, which she is the number one student in the class, she begins to write about her father. He was a drunk and they had a hard life. Francie goes from making A+ to making Cs.

Her teacher quotes, Keats poem 'Truth is beauty and beauty is truth.' She tells Francie that this is what makes a work worth something. Francie tries to defend herself by saying this is her truth. The teacher tells her that beauty is things that lift the heart like beautiful flowers. Drunks, poverty and living in the gutter is not beauty, for we don't want to focus on it. While it does make for difficult subject matter, those things are part of reality and seeing a character find beauty in the gutter is quite beautiful.

Francie is insulted and she stops writing. She is wounded and confused and she ends up growing up in that moment. She no longer looks up to the teacher. I think by the work in our hands, Betsy must have gone through something close like this and we can see that if you give your truth, and it is about the hardships of life, it can be beautiful.

After this moment, the book got so much better for me and I was engaged. It had me, but I had to read half of it to get there. I love the ending and where Francie ends up. I love that she gets to go to College.

This was not a fun book. Parts of this book were work and parts of it were stressful and parts were slow. But there is something that happens going through Francie's journey that make for quite an experience. I love Francie's evolution. The tree in the title is only mentioned a fraction, but it was pretty powerful at the end.

I'm glad I struggled through this book and finished it. It was worth the struggle.

Coffee stains form tiny trails across the cover of my copy, which goes to show how long I stayed with this book. Although written with lucid simplicity, as one would expect from a bildungsroman, I read it slowly. I savored each moment with Francie, a girl with whom I found so much in common (to say how is to tell a meandering story, for our childhoods are so different and yet so similar). Perhaps this is the appeal of this American classic, its transcendence into the psyche of each reader's childhood.

She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.

Coffee stains form tiny dots across the ridges of my book's pages, tinted strokes that become one with the flaws and dinginess of humanity. The guttural evocation of empathy that stems from desolation and hopelessness is one that should resonate not just with me, but with every reader who encounters the bleak, yet bliss moments of Francie's coming of age in 1900s Brooklyn.

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

This is my favorite book in the world.

I love it beyond belief and it inspired me to read.

I am to tired to write a full review of this one right now but will do so in the following days and weeks. Voted for this in "the world's best book" competition.

Actually no, I cannot do a long review of such an amazing book. This book is a part of my soul and I still know people who haven’t read it. I can’t even remember where I was when I first read this book. I fell in love with it and the characters became a part of me. It remains my favorite book ever.

Just a quick ad on here. I find it very sad that the first review one sees of this book is a one star review. I always try not to judge others reading choices but I don’t see how anyone could give this book a one star and I can’t believe it’s the first review people see.

Of course, everybody has their own preferences. But I really hope that does not dissuade anybody from reading this beautiful tapestry of a book that continues to be part of the fabric of history.

A tree grows in Brooklyn is continually on the best books ever written list. That’s because it is in my mind, the best book ever written.

Anyone who hasn’t read this is missing out on a masterpiece.

I have never read the blurb and no one I knew read this to tell me about it. I was under the impression it was a historical fiction book about overcoming racism in Brooklyn, New York. I was completely wrong but not disappointed. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. A GR friend made a comment about her wishing she could read it for the first time again and I have come to see what she means.

I did not like reading the foreword. It gave me spoilers about the story and the finale of Francie. Would not recommend reading that until the end.

I can't review this book. Nothing happens yet everything is happening. There are so many things and characters going on that I wouldn't be able to give the reader anything tangible to take with them. But the story belongs to Francie and this story is about humanity and what it means to be a human. (Set at the turn of the twentieth century)

Thank you Julie Grippo-- Unforgettable. Top (distorted order) 10 books of all time, for me.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It too me a while to get into this old classic novel. Once I did I was hooked! Francie a young girl from the slums of Brooklyn in 1919. She found escape of her unstable childhood through her love of reading and libraries. Francie was the daughter of a drunk and her mother was always on her hands and knees scrubbing others homes, keeping her own together. With a Father as a drunk, a brother, Neely, and Francie’s only friend. Her father who was in and out of their lives dies. Leaving the even more destitute and momma pregnant with their baby and widowed. The family maneuvers through their lives together, as a team. The reader laughs and cries.
Here I am 55 and reading this classic book for the first time!

2.5 stars This book is loved by so many people that I think I expected too much from it. It's a good coming-of-age story that follows Francie Nolan as she grows up in Brooklyn during the early 1900's. I think most of the novelty of the story is how different our world is 100 years later. The writing didn't really do much for me—so much of it felt like things happening to Francie as opposed to her actually doing things. And that held me at a distance. I felt like Betty Smith was just telling me all of it but not showing it to me. Also knowing that a lot of this is based on the author's life, I would've almost rather read a memoir version of this, similar to Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Overall it was an okay story that I'm SO glad to have finally read (it was on my shelf for years), but it's not one I connected to as strongly as so many others.

I don't know why I didn't give a review of this book, but it's exactly the kind of book I love.