Let's Bust a Recap : A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Okay, we're going to start off this final week of September/first week of October (what?!) with the book that's been hanging out in the To Be Blogged About pile the longest. Last year, I completely lost my blogging rhythm (I attribute this solely to the fact that I joined the world of Instagram), and when the time rolled around to document what I read in 2019, I realized there were seven books that I had intended to write recaps for that remained recap-less. Now, I don't write recaps for every single book I read. I don't usually put in the time for re-reads, and some books I just don't care about recapping. But these seven were still out, waiting for their spot on the blog, and I just hadn't gotten to them. I decided to re-evaluate, took your comments into consideration, and determined that I really did want to write recaps for three of the seven: King Lear, The Count of Monte Cristo, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And now, over nine months after finishing it, I'm finally getting around to recapping A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and officially catching up on backlogged posts for 2019. You know. In this completely self-imposed, non-paying chore hobby of blogging. (Feel free to roll your eyes at me all you want; there's a lot of it going on in this house already.)

Alright, alright, enough rambling already. Let's get down to the actual recap, right? 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn published in 1943 is the first (and most acclaimed) novel of Betty Smith. It is considered one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century and was particularly popular among WWII soldiers as it was one of the Armed Services Edition books shipped for free to American military service personnel. Smith said she received ten times more fan mail from servicemen than she did from anyone else. 

In it, we meet our leading character Francie Nolan and read about her life from ages 11 through 17 growing up in the tenements in Brooklyn with her fun-loving brother Neeley, alcoholic father Johnny, hardworking mother Katie, and other extended family, particularly Katie's sisters and mother, the other Rommely women. The story of Francie details the personal dreams and desires of our avid book-loving protagonist while living in poverty in the early 1900s but more broadly portrays the hopes of early 20th century immigrants to rise above poverty through their children. Francie is ultimately symbolized by our title tree that tenaciously grows in the midst of the tenements despite almost impossible conditions. 

The novel is largely an autobiographical account of Betty Smith's own childhood growing up as the oldest daughter of poor German-American immigrants, and it is sad. There are so many people who dearly love this novel and laud its hopefulness and the picture of Francie rising out of poverty, but my heart ached for this young girl and her strained relationship with her mother, her grief over the father she idolized as he grappled with alcoholism and eventually succumbed to an early death, her struggle to get an education from teachers who were just too overworked and overwhelmed to really care about the young minds walking into their classrooms each day. While I smiled at many of Francie's and Neeley's antics as young Brooklyn kids, the novel left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I hated finding out that Francie's first young love was just some boy on a trip to the big city using her, and I wished the whole book through that she and her mother could just connect. I wanted so desperately for the Nolan family to find the true source of Hope instead of fulfilling the requirements of an empty religion.

I see why the book was a success, and I definitely get why it was so popular among young servicemen during the war, many of whom I am sure could intimately relate to the Nolan family and their experiences. I think it's an excellent novel, and I would much rather read a book that makes my heart ache than one that doesn't make me feel anything at all or worse, makes me regret spending the time to read it in the first place (lookin' at you, Kite Runner). 

But ultimately, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn left me feeling melancholy and even though it's a book I would actually recommend, I'm not sure if I'll ever revisit it myself. Does that make sense? Have you ever read a book that you thought was really good, but you were just sad that it made you sad? I loved the Nolan family, and I just really, really wanted them to be happy. You know?

If you take anything away from this recap, please take away the fact that almost a year later, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is still making me feel big feelings. And those are the kind of books that I think are worth reading. Those are the books I set out to read when I came up with this little blog about Reading the Best Books First.