Janet Fitch

White Oleander

A Novel

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space.

angie

Gray dawn was straining peaches by the time I was done.

 I had seen her sitting cross-legged on her bed whispering to her belly, telling it how great the world was going to be, that there were horses and birthdays, white cats and ice cream. 

nobody becomes an artist unless they have to

daylight and sweet nothing by taylor swift

As they joked, I tried to see what Claire found so great about him. He was attractive but not stunning- medium height, trim, small features, closely shaven. He brushed his steel-gray hair back without a part. He wore rimless glasses and his cheeks were rosy for a man's. Hazel eyes, hands smooth with trimmed nails, smooth wedding band. Everything about Ron was smooth, calm, underplayed. He told a story, but it didn't matter if we liked it or not, not like Barry, looking for applause. He didn't overwhelm you. He didn't seem to need anything.

So I became a user of green apple soap, of chamomile shampoo. I preferred to have the window open when I slept. I liked my meat rare. I had a favorite color, ultramarine blue, a favorite number, nine.

My heart felt like a balloon that was filling too full, and I panicked.

At night she began cooking things in the kitchen, things too strange to mention. She steeped oleander in boiling water, and the roots ofa vine with white trumpet flowers that glowed like faces. She soaked a plant collected in moonlight from the neighbors' fence, with little heart-shaped flowers. Then she cooked the water down; the whole kitchen smelled like green and rotting leaves. She threw out pounds of the wet spinach-green stuff into somebody else's dump- ster. She wasn't talking to me anymore. She sat on the roof and talked to the moon,

The little boys shivered despite the jackets over their pajamas and muddy boots, chattering and giggling in the cold and the excitement of being up so late as they gazed at the stars that started pinging like pinballs, mouths opened in case one should fall in. 

July 12. Ran into K. at Small World this afiernoon. Saw him before he saw me. Thrill at the sight of him, the slight slouch of broad shoulders, paint in his hair. That threadbare shirt, so ancient it is more an idea thana shirt. I wanted him to discover me the same way, so I turned away, browsed an Illuminati chapbook. Knowing how I looked against the light through the window, my hair on fire, my dress barely there. Waiting to stop his heart.

All that weekend, she didn't say a thing about her date with Barry, but she wrote poems and crumpled them up, threw them at the wastebasket.

Silje Løvli Lorentsen

Amelia C 

Isabella 

writing is so good the story is so heartbreaking tough read

I've never read a book like this, it's also usually not the genre I would have read, but after watching the movie I knew i had to read the book.

It's incredibly poetic and real. It takes up so many topics in a reflective way and really grips the reader. 

I took many breaks while i read it, since it was new to me and also at times challenging

I related a lot to Astrid's character, the way her mind works, her thoughts, observations it gave me flashbacks to a part of who I used to be

Lulu Evensen

I've never read a book like this, it's also usually not the genre I would have read, but after watching the movie I knew i had to read the book.

It's incredibly poetic and real. It takes up so many topics in a reflective way and really grips the reader. 

I took many breaks while i read it, since it was new to me and also at times challenging

I related a lot to Astrid's character, the way her mind works, her thoughts, observations it gave me flashbacks to a part of who I used to be

the type of uncomfortable and sadness you feel when you smoke the wrong strain and you start to overthink your life

athena

Grace M

This novel is nothing short of a mental and emotional odyssey. Pain and beauty radiate from every page, every word. Reading this novel felt like living through Astrid's adolecense with her, which made it all the more gut-wrenching when things went awry. Harrowing, hypnotic, and completely unforgettable.

Michael Springer

I couldn't stop reading this book until I had finished it. It's very good.

A New York Times Bestseller Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery -- but their idyll is shattered when Ingrid falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, she murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become.

Jacqueline Englund

A book that reads like a poem. The story was beautiful but the writing was everything!

Trish

This book is a beautiful tragedy. It’s so well written, the lyrical quality of the prose is just unprecedented in my mind. Ingrid Magnussen must be the most selfish, calculated, cruel, and deranged character I've encountered and yet I couldn't help but admire her beauty, her dedication to her aesthetic, her superiority complex, her unwavering pride and confidence. This is a story that will stay with me for years to come, and given the nature of the writing, I'm positive that it is a book I will re-read several times in the future.

For more bookish photos, reviews and updates follow me on instagram @concerningnovels.

Haylie

What a gripping, wild ride. I've started and stopped this book several times before making an effort to read it in 2018, but this time is the charm because I am so appreciative to witness such beautiful writing! Janet Fitch is now on my list of authors to admire because there's just something about the way she commands a sentence and the way she describes something as simple as a shack of something as abstract as the feeling of longing. No spoilers, but with such a crazy middle in happy the ending left on a calmer note. Not to mention the character development of Astrid is something to acknowledge and take note of when character building.

so many feelings for this book. it was really just a beautiful and complicated story. on each page there was such vivid description and the writing was so lovely i felt like the whole book was a poem. 

i could feel myself getting anxious with astrid when claire and ingrid met. i cried when claire passed and when ingrid showed remorse for the first time. i was angry at everyone who had treated astrid poorly even in the slightest ways. 

i didn’t really have high expectations for this book but i loved it so much. 

so many feelings for this book. it was really just a beautiful and complicated story. on each page there was such vivid description and the writing was so lovely i felt like the whole book was a poem. 

i could feel myself getting anxious with astrid when claire and ingrid met. i cried when claire passed and when ingrid showed remorse for the first time. i was angry at everyone who had treated astrid poorly even in the slightest ways. 

i didn’t really have high expectations for this book but i loved it so much. 

Lauren Tabor

This was such an interesting book and maybe not normally something I'd pick up. But I found it at a thrift store and somewhere in my brain knew that it is a book people have talked about, so I picked it up. I really enjoyed reading this, the writing was beautiful and the story was heartbreaking and captivating. The mother and daughter relationship in this was so interesting. I couldn't help but become fully engrossed in this story to see how it ended up.

Catherine Mazeika

This book tells a sad profound story but I somehow felt myself not super engaged and wanting to pick this up. Also felt like the poetic writing style was a bit much at times almost to the point of fake deep

this book reads like poetry. the writing is beautiful. the imagery is stunning. 

maybe it struck home because i related to it on a personal level very much. i find my childhood and life an exact mirror of astrid’s and my  mother one in the same with hers, besides the extremity of the murder conviction alone. i’ve heard some reviews say they didn’t enjoy it as it was followed by one tragedy after another and was too hard to get through. i felt it a relatable comfort. so your reaction to the story itself  may differ, but these are notably amazing elements in the writing itself i think are objectively true.

first of all, janet fitch leaves much up to personal interpretation. nothing she does is a cliff hanger per se, but she never says if a character is “good or bad” or if they (spoiler******) truly are cheating on their spouse like the spouse is suspicious of them doing. also, the characters are far from perfect. they are all very real and flawed, and even the main character makes some questionable decisions and holds on to thoughts you’re going to disagree with. the characters are meant to be written as complex and real.

i think there are a lot of meanings, truths, and deeper themes in this book. it has that perfect poetic sentiment, or je ne sais quoi, that i look for in all
writing. 

-it deals with the emerging *self* as astrid tries to find her own identity separate from her mother. how much is from your blood/roots, vs. what you were taught growing up, what you learned, what you decided later, what your predisposed to in taste ? i could go on and on and on about where this is present and the questions raised and explored within this topic throughout the experiences and character development of astrid in the book.

-the complicated emotions around both being able to love and hate someone. the fact that these emotions don’t exclude each other. 

-the way different places, households, years etc. are entirely different worlds of themselves.

-the way the world looks vastly different in survival mode, and after witnessing so much trauma. there is a quality to the way astrid views the world with this detached ness after what she’s gone through that i can relate to from a similar upbringing. i think it puts reality into perspective. 

Georgia Carr

White Oleander is conveyed through the most beautiful combinations of words. It's poetic and startling. The plot is good, the characters are real and I really liked it.

White Oleander is a painfully beautiful first novel about a young girl growing up the hard way. It is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, their selfish love and cruel behaviour, and the search for love and identity.Astrid has been raised by her mother, a beautiful, headstrong poet. Astrid forgives her everything as her world revolves around this beautiful creature until Ingrid murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life. Astrid's fierce determination to survive and be loved makes her an unforgettable figure. 'Liquid poetry' - Oprah Winfrey 'Tangled, complex and extraordinarily moving' - Observer

Alexia

White Oleander is a painfully beautiful first novel about a young girl growing up the hard way. It is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, their selfish love and cruel behaviour, and the search for love and identity.Astrid has been raised by her mother, a beautiful, headstrong poet in a loving but isolated relationship. Ingrid is a free spirit given to making poetical, pretentious pronouncements who wilfully neglects her daughter and overlooks her motherly duties. Astrid forgives her everything as her world revolves around this beautiful creature until Ingrid murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life. Astrid becomes one of the thousands of foster children in Los Angeles, the damaged people looking only to survive. As she steers her way through this changed reality - a series of homes, guns, drugs, suicide and dysfunctional families and couples - she finds strength in her unshakeable certainty of her own worth, her need to paint and her unfettered sense of the absurd. Astrid's fierce determination to survive and be loved makes her an unforgettable figure in this elegantly crafted debut novel which is like a siren song ready to seduce and hypnotise you.

Jade Flynn

A story told with writing that reads like poetry is as alluring and noxious as the oleander itself. Can't believe this was sitting on my shelf for nearly four years. 

"So now I'm supposed to feel pity for you and those other women who'd lost their own children during a holdup, a murder, a murder, a fiesta of greed? Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good."

Amber Laha

This book started great for me, until I realized how over the board it was. Fitch over described and the similes were done to death. 

The Characters are clichéd and stereotypical, there really was nothing unique about them and they are people we see in books and films all the time. The mom, I felt, was just a bit too much for me. 

Also, I thought Astrid should have been way more troubled and disturbed considering all the things she went through and for someone who was suppose to be gifted, it never really showed.

I would have liked this book nonetheless, because the story was interesting to me, if not all that realistic, but it was boring after half way through. So it only gets 2 1/2 stars

Elize van Heerden

This was definitely a book that I struggled with. For 360 pages Astrid was literally tortured and manipulated by her mother through letters, all for it to come to the last 18 pages to have a rambled not really resolved story. 
Hated it, will never read anything by this author again. So many metaphors in one sentence, "poetical" drivel for pages. If it wasn't that I was reading this with friends I would've DNF'd it after 100 pages

Easily the best book I have read in years. I can open any page in the book and find something ordinary or human described beautifully.

Heather Roden  

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Rachel

White Oleander is dark and depressing, but beautifully written. My opinion of Ingrid flowed with Astrid’s feelings that changed as more time passed. You miss her, you hate her, you wish she would go away then suddenly it becomes you want to know shes at least not worst mother in the world and surprisingly she does care somewhat, Ingrid is just very flawed. Astrid goes though a lot of homes with different dynamics and Astrid working through them to find her place. She discovers who she really is when she is away from her mom and its heartbreaking at times because she can be in a hopeless state of mind thinking she doesn’t deserve to have hope and a future then she actually accepts there are options for her out there only for it to come crashing back down. I felt frustrated at first at the ending, Astrid still wanting to be with Ingrid, but she struggled with that the entire book so it only makes sense for her to want to be back with her mom, but has reservations (rightfully so too). There are parts that are uncomfortable, but that is what makes the novel feel good to read as well as the flow of the words. Highly recommend.

White Oleander

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