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hrbumga · 2 years

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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

"The world was hers for the reading." -- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I did it! I read my third book for my TIMES Best 100 YA Challenge, and I’m happy to say it was another really good one. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943) wasn’t one I was necessarily expecting to like, but I was pleasantly surprised.

This blog post will contain spoilers.

Preconceptions

Had I previously read this book before the challenge? No.

I knew even less about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (ATGIB) than I did about Anne of Green Gables when I started it. I had extremely vague memories of my mom reading it for a bookclub some 15+ years ago, and all I remember was that she was not a fan. As a kid, I assumed it was a book about just staring at a tree because apparently I had no idea that titles could be symbolic. That’s all I had going in, otherwise I was completely fresh as a reader.

Overall Feelings

I really enjoyed this one! I think I cynically expected this to be a bummer throughout but was delighted when things actually resolved in a happy ending for the characters. The overall arc of coming-of-age in poverty was really well paced and the ending felt earned, not just a let’s wrap this up and make everyone happy again thing.

I could see why it wouldn’t be everyone’s thing though. A lot of the book is a slow-paced character study, centered around Francie primarily as well as her world. The book takes its time with the details, it’s not very plot-driven. I like character studies though, so it was really enjoyable for me.

Presentation

ATGIB is separated into five “books” that detail different time periods in the characters’ lives. In many ways, it reminded me of acts in a play, which the book nodded towards as one of Francie and her brother Neely’s favorite pastimes as children was going to see local theater shows.

Book one is an introduction of sorts, we meet Francie at age 11 and get to know her world in Williamsburg. She comes from a poor, working-class family but they seem to be doing okay for the time-being. Francie and Neely help her mom with grocery shopping, they’re extremely involved in the vibrant neighborhood. There’s a sense of childhood wonder here, their financial troubles shifts into the background to make room for the imagination and naivety that comes with being a little kid. The book notes a scraggly tree that seems to stubbornly keep growing despite the rough living conditions. Book one is largely expository, showing the reader the status quo of our protagonist.

Then, book two, we shift back in time to Francie’s parents’ upbringings. Johnny and Katie are immigrants from Ireland and Austria respectively. They get married young, while Katie is in her upper teens and Johnny is in his early twenties, and Katie quickly becomes pregnant with Francie. Johnny doesn’t handle the news well, taking to drinking, while Katie works hard to try to set aside money so her future children will have a better life than she did growing up. Book two is mostly about providing context for the rest of the story.

Book three is the largest section in the book and returns to Francie’s perspective. We follow her through her adolescence, as the family slips further into poverty. Katie is working multiple jobs, Johnny can’t hold down anything steady and his alcoholism gets gradually worse but he seems to try to be the “fun parent.” Francie adores her father and finds her mother stern. The novel does an excellent job showing us the perspective of a child who might not have the context— that her “fun” parent is often avoiding responsibilities while their “strict” parent is barely holding things together. There’s a lot of tension built until book three concludes with Johnny eventually passing from alcohol poisoning, leaving his struggling family and pregnant wife behind.

In book four, the family grieves and both kids have to drop out of school to make ends meet, especially now that there’s a new baby to support. Francie lies about her age to get a factory job and gradually, with Francie and Neely’s income, the family starts to gain shaky ground. We see Francie grow into her young adulthood, facing heartbreak, new friendships, and newfound independence from having income of her own. Neely is able to return to school and Francie takes classes on the side to continue her education, things are looking up.

Finally, book five, Francie is 17 and slated to go to university in the fall. Katie remarries an officer in town and they move out of their apartment into a more comfortable home. As they leave, Francie notices the tree in their neighborhood has somehow continued to thrive despite the adversity. I could see the tree motif being on-the-nose, but I choose to see it as the book being blunt about its metaphors, I liked it. The family is at peace at last.

The structure having that build, the climax in book three with Johnny’s death, and then conflict resolution was such a welcoming and organic way to write the novel, I really appreciated Smith’s approach to storytelling. I think this book would be an ideal one to study in high school English because of how clearly laid out the structure, themes, and character development are.

A Little Background

The first thing any resource describes ATGIB as is “semi-autobiographical,” since much of the book revolves around an adolescent girl and daughter of immigrants growing up in Williamsburg and that’s precisely how Betty Smith grew up. Smith and the protagonist, Francie, have a lot in common: their birthday is December 15th, they moved around a lot in their youth, they survived poverty, they had a stern mother, and their father passed of alcoholism in their late teens.

There’s a lot of descriptions in the book that are so incredibly detailed that I found myself thinking, “oh, this is describing a real memory the author had.” The first time I realized this was early on, Francie describes a type of bread her mother would make by grinding up stale crumbs, mixing in ketchup, water, and onion powder, reshaping it, and baking it into a new loaf. There’s another point when Francie finds she has a knack for storytelling but that her teachers feel her compositions on poverty are too grim, and Francie spitefully vows to eventually tell her story, unflinchingly, about her upbringing. I fully believe that this is a real situation that Smith encountered as a teenager, and this book is the result.

The book deeply resonated with people, to the point where even soldiers in WWII would carry the mass-market paperback edition with them because the book so viscerally described Brooklyn and Williamsburg and was a very human-feeling book (NPR). The fact that that human feeling has persisted today shows off Smith’s masterful skills as an author and storyteller.

Rating

★★★★★

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn deserves no less than 5-stars, it was an excellent window into a different world that had a lot of heart.

Moving Forward

I’ve already started reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank for the fourth book on my list! It’s extremely interesting reading a diary account published posthumously, I think both experiencing and reviewing it is going to look very different from the others on my list.

If you’d like to read about the challenge overall, be sure to check out my TIMES 100 Best YA Challenge post, and you can see a static list of the books I’ll be reading here. Also feel free to check me out on Goodreads and follow/friend me! I’m always excited to interact with other bookworms. Until next time!

Sources

Atlas, Nava. 2018. “Betty Smith, Author of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” The Literary Ladies Almanac. 28 May 2018.

Glover, Erma Williams. 1994. “Smith, Betty.” NCPedia. 1994 (rev. March 2022).

Guptill Manning, Molly & NPR. 2014. “WWII By The Books: The Pocket-Sized Editions That Kept Soldiers Reading.” National Public Radio. 10 December 2014.

#times 100 best ya challenge #a tree grows in brooklyn #betty smith

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