A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Highly recommended particulary for the under 18 and older than 12 crowd. This is the book that convinced my sixth grade self that I wasn't uncool for spending so much time reading and dreaming. For if those things were satisfying for Francie Nolan they were good enough for me. I loved the quiet pathos of the book. Francie's mother's determination to teach her children with nightly readings of William Shakespeare and the Bible are in stark contrast to their father's devil may care attitude. Her father encouraged Francie to dream big .. her mother taught her that dreams are fine as long as you keep one foot on the ground.I think this book is equally compelling for adults. There are adult situations. Situations like alcoholism , deviant behavior, and death that serve as a perfect way to introduce and discuss these matters with young tweens and teens. It has been almost 80 years since publication but the novel has aged very well. After 40 years and rereadimg the book countless times Framcie Nolan is still my literary friend. This book is simply marvelous.

This book is thought to be semi autobiographical. Written years ago, it is amazing how much is true today. Especially in the political arena. The story is simply about a family living in Brooklyn as seen through the eyes of the young daughter, born in approximately 1900. The plot is simply the day to day life and struggles of the family consists of Johnny and Katie Nolan, their son Neely and daughter Francie. Appearing frequently are Katies two sisters and their family. The father, Johnny, is an alcoholic who seldom works but who is looked upon by Francie as a hero. Katie works as a scrub woman cleaning several tenement buildings. Other than an occasional singing waiter's job that Johnny finds And almost more than the money he brings home is the leftover food he is allowed to take to his family at the end of the night., Katie is the primary source of the family's support. Johnny is a dreamer who keeps saying his ship is going to come in but it never does. Katie is pragmatic. I found one conversation between the two to be very interesting when they were discussing an upcoming election. Johnny was a union man and therefore a democrat. Women didn't have the right to vote yet but Katie was very astute and had figured out the democrat candidates came around only at election time making promises they never kept. And she also realized the democrats supported unfettered immigration because they thought all new immigrants would vote democrat once they were citizens. (Keep in mind this was written decades ago so please do not accuse me of inserting my own political thoughts into the book. It is the author who wrote it.) The two children had to help contribute to the support of the family by doing things that the kids of today would never do. They walked home from school with their eyes downcast, looking at the streets and sidewalks to find any penny that had been dropped, or a bit of foil, cigarette butts, pieces of cloth, that they could sell to the scrap metal man, or the rag picker to get a couple of pennies to take home. The children are sent out each Saturday to get some food that is cooked and eaten throughout the next week. They have to haggle with the meat man and oversee the green grocer's selection of a vegetable to ensure he doesn't stick them with something wilted. They are bullied and called names....usually by other children just as poor as they are....but they learn to endure. Eventually, after the death of their father, their circumstances actually improve because at the age of 13 and 14 the two kids get jobs and therefore are able to contribute their pay to the family. As the book ends, one has to wonder how many people today could actually live the life this family did. I'm sure that today's snowflakes couldn't cope with what this family did, especially when you hear that students of today need safe spaces whey they can play with puppies, or play dough all because they hear someone utter a comment with which they disagreed. This book should be required reading for every literature class, whether it be high school or college. It might open some eyes, and maybe some minds.

I read this when I was a teenager and much of Francie's life mirrors mine. I spent many hours of my preteen yrs climbing trees ... they were my escape from the chaos & sadness of my life. Much of her life mirrors my own. 50+ yrs later I understand even more why I love this book. I've cried as I remember the experiences & feelings which shaped who I am. Today I have a life my mother only dreamed of ... I'm college educated ... I have a loving & supportive husband, 2 wonderful children & many grandchildren. My life has not been easy by any means but the optimism of my spirit ... like Francie's ... has propelled me to where I am. I recommend this book for everyone regardless of their !ife's experiences. Understanding the lives of this family in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 1900s ... their struggle to put food on the table & keep warm in the winter ... the determination of Francie's mother, Katie, to raise her children to be educated, proud of who they are in spite of the poverty & to never take charity but work as hard as they can ... is a must read!!!

I honestly don't know where to begin. This is a truly great novel. Years ago, I read this book but I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the consistently high quality of the prose, and the depth of the writer's insights into human nature and the world she describes in such detail for us. A few weeks ago I sat down and read it word for word from beginning to end and I was enormously moved by and impressed with it. The writing is rich, precise, brilliantly restrained and immensely satisfying. Francie is a true heroine, struggling to fulfill her dreams as a sensitive and creative young person in a harsh and often brutal environment. Her imagination and intelligence are beautifully revealed in pages filled with brilliant and wise observation, and simple incidents that can move you to tears. In many respects it's a heartbreaking novel, filled with suffering, and often deeply sad; but it's always enormously inspiring and somehow always entertaining. That some critics when it was published dismissed it as "sentimental" is hard to believe. It is anything but sentimental. ---- It is realism at its finest. Highly recommended. Truly an American classic.

My favourite book of all time. I discovered this by accident, and when I read it I felt sure that it was written recently. Was surprised to learn the story's age. This wonderful, poignant, shocking, sad, beautiful, brilliant book was an instant re-read for me, and one I have re-read every year since that first time I read it.

I was watching a programme about the D-day landings and one chap spoke of walking back through the dead and dying and coming across one man who had pulled this book out of his backpack to continue reading it as he died. It might seem foolish, but I bought this book for him. For a man who, amidst all that noise and destruction, the shouts and the pain, wanted to be taken to another world. I fully intend to read this book and, each time I do, it will be partially in honour of a man I never knew, who's name I don't know, who, rather than scream, died whilst reading a book he presumably loved (or why take it with him?) I just hope I approach my own death with a semblance of the same courage.

A family tries to raise themselves off the bottom rung of poverty in early 1900s New York.Centred around Francie, the daughter of a hardworking mother (“with a fierce desire for survival” p86) and an out-of-work drunken but loveable father (“hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer”), we see the family through the eyes of the young girl over the course of her childhood until Francie is able to earn a living for herself.The book oozes warmth and cosiness. Though there are severe hardships to endure, they are overcome by means of determination and a caring network of family and friends.What sets this apart from so many other novels is the delicious vocabulary. I particularly admired the stories the girl attached to numbers (see p165). Even things as ordinary as bricks, and hearth, and bathtubs are imaginatively described (p127).So well conceived, the tale seems obviously autobiographical, but evidently it is not – Betty Smith claims this to be merely the product of her creative imagination.Watch the film as well, though the film doesn’t follow Francie into the workplace. The film also avoids the controversy of the attempted sexual attack on the preteen girl by a serial maniac, though both film and book refer to the extra ‘touching’ penny the girl receives every time she visited the junk man.Page 145 sums up the novel rather nicely. “A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the boot straps has two choices: having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel up-climb.” This book follows the latter path.

I have just finished a re-read of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for my good group. I was enthralled the first time and was enamoured even more so the second time. Characters are introduced deftly into the story very early on. The protagonist Francie tells her heart breaking story with innocence and spirit. She adores her father Johnny who tries his best to have a loving relationship but his alcoholism devours him. She admires her mother's tenacity (Katie) and work ethic to ensure she can feed her family as she cannot rely on Johnny. She is very close to her young brother Neely. Her ability to read keenly and write with ability are her drivers which make her stand out from other children of her own age. I was introduced to this saga by American friends as this is not so well known in the UK. I recommend it whenever I can.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn holds the honour of getting me in the feels on more than one occasion, no easy task considering how emotionally stunted my wife repeatedly informs me I am. Time is well spent establishing the characters early on and this serves as the foundation for why the family’s fortunes and misfortunes in a disadvantaged community have an impact on you. An honest but heartwarming look at the importance of sacrificial love for the sake of family.

This is a truly great book. It starts off slowly but by the time I got to the end I didn't want it to finish. It is difficult to comprehend the extreme poverty described in the book in what is now considered to be one of the world's wealthiest nations. Despite the grinding poverty, this is not a depressing book. On the contrary, it is uplifting with the characters making the most of what little they have. It is populated by real people, not caricatures. It is a wonderful novel that everyone should read.