I read this book many, many times during adolescence, and absolutely loved it. It was introduced to me by my mother, who also read it as a teen and loved it. How's that for a feel-good anecdote? So when my book club decided to read this for January, I was feeling some warm fuzzies at the thought of returning to such a well-loved book.
Well. I loved it all over again. But only after I got through some terrible shocks, such as the blatant anti-Semitism and stereotyping of various ethnic groups, bigamy, pedophilia, acute alcoholism--gosh, I remembered none of that. My romantic older self remembered a charming narrator by the name of Francie Nolan who endured a poverty-stricken childhood in Brooklyn during the early part of the 1900s, but everything I remembered had a distinct charm-filled filter.
Not that there aren't charming things in this book. There are; but there are plenty of not-charming things too, as I've mentioned above. I had to really spend some time thinking about not finishing the book, and if I was going to continue, how I felt about all the other stuff.
Here's what I came to: This book is still worth reading, if only for the picture of a very specific time and place. If I was going to share this with a young person, I would do so on the condition that we have a lot of conversations about the attitudes displayed. I'm not a fan of the idea that we ignore these things, or pretend they didn't (or don't still) happen. Better to talk about them. Unfortunately, I ended up missing book club, so no doubt I missed a good discussion.
Overall, the story of Francie and her family--brother Neeley, overworked mother and alcoholic father--is one of tough spirit and rising above, which is no doubt why it's a classic that's still being read now. As I read, I wondered how much of this is autobiographical; what little I know of author Betty Smith's biography seems to indicate that she drew heavily from real life. In my edition's afterword, Smith's daughter says of her mother, "She often said about 'Tree' that she didn't write it the way it was, but the way it should have been."
That makes my mother's heart hurt. This is a very harsh novel in places. And that's an improvement over how it really was? Yikes.
I'm glad I returned to it, even if it jolted me very uncomfortably in many ways.