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Loading... A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)by Betty Smith
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Francie’s story: a young impoverished girl growing up in Brooklyn at the start of the last century. Semi autobiographical novel, written in the 1940s. At once an historical document but also as fresh and pertinent as if it were written this morning. Francie pragmatically faces hardship and the tribulations of being female in a poverty-stricken district. Fantastic sense of time and place, with a likeable protagonist. ( ) I read this when I was about 12 and enjoyed it, bu tthink I must have missed alot back then. It is like adopting another whole faamily. She brings you co sompletely into their time and life, it is wrenching to finish the book. If you've always wanted to live in turn of the century to World War I Brooklyn, here is your chance i know this isn't a popular opinion, but this book is very much just okay for me. i thought maybe i'd like this better this time around, but i feel pretty much the same about it as the first time i read it over a decade ago. i really liked the first 70 or so pages. the next 50 were alright. the almost 250 after that a real slog where it felt like a collection of little stories she was trying to make work together as a whole; like she was stuffing together a bunch of vignettes that were supposed to be a cohesive story. and they fit together, but the writing was stiff and uninteresting and the stories themselves felt overdone. then it suddenly became more readable again, and i liked the last 75 or so pages. "After Election, the politicians forgot their promises and enjoyed an earned rest until New Year, when they started work on the next Election." i like her point, i like her message (except for some things toward the end that i wasn't totally on board with), i like the light she was shining on poverty and a way of life that was not supposed to be written about. it's just overly long and not the best book of its kind that tells this story. (1.5 stars) from sept 2011: not particularly well written, but tells a clear picture of life in a certain time and place, for the poorer part of society. (2 stars) Belongs to Publisher SeriesHarper Perennial Olive Editions (2014 Olive) Is contained inContainsHas the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a student's study guide
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family's erratic and eccentric behaviorâ??such as her father Johnny's taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy's habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorceâ??no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans' life lacked drama. By turns heartbreaking and uplifting, the Nolans' daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg lifeâ??from "junk day" on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that "cuts right to the heart of life," hails the New York Times. "If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experien No library descriptions found.
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