Reading List: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I am trying to work in more BIPOC and female authors onto the list. To that end I decided to go with a novel that I had been meaning to read for years but never got around to, Betty Smith’s remarkable 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

This was an absolutely incredible read for many reasons, but for my money the use of language is the best one. The flowing sentences follow our main characters Francie and Neeley Nolan as they grow up poor in one of the boroughs of New York City, Brooklyn. The characters move houses a couple of times throughout and are always thought to be in financial distress. Johnny the father is a drunk who works as a singing waiter, and mother Katie cleans houses and tries to make life better for her progeny. From the children early on gathering up junk to sell to the trader on their street or (*spoiler*) Francie growing up and falling in love for the first time, this is a very empathetic book toward the main characters, always letting us see their travails but never intervening in judgement. This is just a novel that deals with what it is like to truly live life and to have grown up in a very important part of the twentieth century. And while the titular “tree” gets mentioned a few times, I didn’t think it was quite as important as the family dynamic, especially when (*spoiler*) a major character passes away halfway through the narrative. This is an example of how our greatest novelists break the “rules” of writing and make it work. I would say introducing a new baby character around the same time was also daring. Francie is also a very interesting character in that she discovers the world through reading books at the library and coming up with her own compositions, not unlike the young Betty Smith did according to some end material I had in my copy of the book. Even when (*spoiler*) something horrific happens to Francie and she is protected by her mother, she is an indomitable spirit throughout the tale. Francie’s brother is no slouch either, ending up not like his father as he grows up.

As stated this was one of the best books I have encountered in some time, based on the wonderful use of language. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who has not read it or is at all interested in life in America at the turn of the previous century. I know there is plenty going on in our current century, so it was great to ignore that and dive into the personal worlds of these characters each time I sat with the work and hoped that their lives would turn out well. Which, not to add one final *spoiler* to this, but they rather do. There are also of course the many themes present throughout the novel (immigration, education, etc), but I’ll leave those to readers to suss out because they are so integral to the plot and environment of the book. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure.