Francie has a confrontation with an English teacher. One of the themes is in fact being true and honest. The characters are very human, very fallible. It doesn't try to make people better than they are. It is a character-driven, family-focused historical novel. It is not a fast-paced action, adventure novel.

I loved her observations.Ī Tree Grows In Brooklyn is rich in detail AND rich in characterization. Truth does not equal beauty as Francie learns. It is a book that embraces ALL of life: the big things, the little things: no matter how ugly or beautiful. The book has a good number of flashbacks letting readers get to know all the members of the family before getting good and settled in Francie's life. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is set circa 1910-1918 in Brooklyn, New York it is very much a coming-of-age novel focusing on Francie, yet expanding to include several generations of her family. Readers get the chance to get to know Francie, the heroine, her brother, Neeley, her mother, Katie, her father, Johnny, her aunts, Sissy and Evy, and her grandmother, Mary Rommely. Oh how I loved Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I could often relate! Wonderful book.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I often found myself smiling at the way the author wrote the thoughts in the characters' heads. Despite the bleakness of this family's situation and poverty, I did not find it grim or depressing. Emotions were expressed in a way that resonated. I enjoyed the simple but evocative writing style.

It is 'not larded with metaphor or simile or the sound of the writer's voice in love with its own music'.

I liked her descriptions of what the book is 'about': essentially, what it means to be human.family, love, loss of innocence, birth of knowledge. I alternated listening to the audiobook and reading the ebook, and I re-read the Forward by Anna Quindlen when I finished. Apparently the publisher wanted the author to make it a novel rather than a memoir. A coming of age story of life in a Brooklyn tenement in the early 1900s, it is told from an 11 year old girl's perspective (through age 17) and is said to be largely autobiographical. This book is the epitome of classic American literary historical fiction and I thought it was brilliant, realistic, evocative, and utterly believable.

A tree grows in brooklyn 1943