A tree grows in Brooklyn
1943
- teenage girls
- girls
- fiction
- classic literature
- poor families
- brooklyn (nueva york, n.y.)
- muchachas adolescentes
- reading materials
- pobres
- spanish language
The story
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
What it’s like
Warm, crowded, and unhurried, this is the sound of a tenement block in summer: the clatter of a bucket, neighbors calling from fire escapes, a father's singing over the scrape of a kitchen chair. The prose is plainspoken and observant, with a child's eye for small things, like the ailanthus that pushes up through the concrete of a Williamsburg yard, or the smell of a bakery at dawn. Its rhythm is episodic, moving through years in short, self-contained chapters that linger on school, library books, holidays, and seasons of getting by. The mood is bittersweet and tender, often funny, with a steady undertow of hardship: poverty, a father's drinking, and a few sudden losses. Sexual menace appears in a couple of scenes, handled without explicit detail, and the violence is rare and quick. Gentle rather than cozy, it suits a slow Sunday afternoon, a long train ride, or a reader who wants a big-hearted family saga that doesn't look away from difficulty. It is for readers who love coming-of-age stories, who find comfort in a determined young narrator, and who like books that make a city feel lived in.
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