White Oleander: A Novel [Paperback]

White Orleander is about Mothers and daughters and the complex relationships we sometimes have with those we love but don't always like.

It's a book about life, death, survival and the redemption of the soul.

Astrid is the teenage daughter of Ingrid now in prison after murdering an ex-lover and Astrid finds herself at the Mercy of the Los Angeles foster care system that is both brutal and tender.

From her first teenage love affair with one of her foster mother's boyfriend's to her life in Berlin as a cynical but gifted young Artist we have driven through a life filled with tears, laughter, and the uncompromising brutality of the human experience.

Astrid is above all a survivor and she takes from her foster life experience a new way of thinking, of understanding those around her, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

For me the best part of the book was Astrid's artistry of life, along with her acute understanding of mother's selfish whims and desire to be "beautiful and wanted" by the world for her talents as a poet, even though she is languishing in jail.

But Astrid is everything her mother is not, and her ability to carry her life with her in "museums," customised suitcases representing all those people that have influenced her life is wonderful, and you can feel the presence of Star, the God loving, drug taking foster mother, who shoots Astrid for seducing her man, the cowardly and weak Ray and other characters such as the racist Marvel and Olivia a woman for who men are no mystery, the suicidal Claire most beloved to Astrid, the greedy voracious Amelia Ramos, Yvonne a teenage mother with more dreams than sense, the streetwise Rena and Paul, Astrid's young lover in Berlin, like her a former foster child and writer.

And threading its way through the novel always is the power of Ingrid, struggling to keep control of her daughter who is surviving the world without her.

This is not an easy book to read, there is brutality, tenderness, betrayal, and deception in every page but you are compelled to read on and though the ending is far from satisfying it is what you expect.

Read White Orleander, and pray that no one ever makes a suitcase for you that represents your life because if they do you might not like what you see...

Astrid begins the book as nothing but a reflection of who her mother projects her to be. Quiet, "flying under the radar", she is like the "clay that is happy in a good potter's hands", content to be molded and shaped every which way. It is only when she is no longer under her mother's wing - and spell - that she starts to grow up and become a real person of her own. The book is about Astrid's search for identity, and the people along the way who help her or hurt her or ultimately teach her lessons - usually the hard way - about life.

Sure, the abuse in the various foster homes borders on cliché... but it never quite gets there, because Janet Fitch has a gift for nuance. All her substitute mothers - Starr, Marvel, Amelia, Claire, Rena - would have been two-dimesional cardboard cutouts if written by some other author. But Fitch fleshes them out, makes them real.

In fact, the only static character in the book is Ingrid, and that is because she is intentionally so: a symbol more than a person. Astrid, in contrast to her mother, is dynamic, and this is why Ingrid seems to change throughout the book. She hasn't changed, but the way Astrid sees her has. At first, she is larger-than-life, hauntingly seductive, beautiful and mysterious. Gradually, as Astrid matures and begins to break away, Ingrid is revealed as selfish, manipulative, sociopathic and ultimately, small and insignificant. Astrid survives her hardships and ultimately emerges stronger for them, ready to shake off her mother's influence and live life on her own terms.

White Oleander is a book I find myself reading again and again. Unfortunaetely, the film adaptation was terrible, but the book itself is still highly worthwhile. Recommended.