Historical Fictionistas discussion

This is the SPOILER thread for our March 2021 Group Read, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

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 connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

I just loved the way that Katie accepted the proposal. Her a matter a fact way of saying I am not marrying you for your money, but it will be nice...I am marrying because I want to. It just reminded me how Katie had so much pride and how she taught her children to take nothing for free. Earn it all and you will see its rewards. I laughed when I read her acceptance of the proposal. She is a great character that is strong and witty.

I just finished chapter 30—the chapter about Joanna and her illegitimate baby—and am somewhat depressed by the misogynistic message in it, about women not sticking together the way men do. On the whole this book tends to focus on people as individuals, so this little leap into gender stereotyping bothered me. Not a great message to be sending to young female readers, and far from being a universal truth IMO.

Finished it. I suspect that if I had read this first as a child I would have adored it like many readers in this group. As it is I liked it and had a good deal of respect for its portrait of a particular time and place, and its truth-telling about that time and place, but I found it a bit clumsy and obvious in spots. Too many characters seemed more like types than people, and the long flashback in the first third of the book got a bit tedious for me.