White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Description

A beautiful first novel about a young woman growing up the hard way, this is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, and the search for love and identity.

Astrid has been raised by her mother, who is a beautiful, headstrong poet, in a loving but isolated relationship. The two are inseparable until Ingrid murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life. Astrid becomes one of the thousands of foster children in Los Angeles. As she navigates this new reality — a series of homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers — she finds strength in her unshakable certainty of her own worth and her unfettered sense of the absurd.

Her fierce determination to find an authentic self and a place to stand in the world makes her a lovable and unforgettable figure in this brilliantly written debut.

Editorial Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1999: Astrid Magnussen, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a mother who is as sharp as a new knife. An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her daughter that they are descendants of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes.

As Astrid bumps from trailer park to tract house to Hollywood bungalow, White Oleander uncoils her existential anxieties. “Who was I, really?” she asks. “I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces.” Fitch adroitly leads Astrid down a path of sorting out her past and identity. In the process, this girl develops a wire-tight inner strength, gains her mother's white-blonde beauty, and achieves some measure of control over their relationship. Even from prison, Ingrid tries to mold her daughter. Foiling her, Astrid learns about tenderness from one foster mother and how to stand up for herself from another. Like the weather in Los Angeles–the winds of the Santa Anas, the scorching heat–Astrid's teenage life is intense. Fitch's novel deftly displays that, and also makes Astrid's life meaningful. –Katherine Anderson