Book review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I knew nothing about this book other than the title and a vague sense that it was commonly assigned reading for teenagers. Turns out it is heart-breakingly good. Partly that was the tragic situation of the family, but mostly it was how delicately it captured coming of age. That's a rare thing, despite the popularity of the bildungsroman. Few manage to convey the phenomenology of those ages, the real feeling of becoming a person and bootstrapping a full personality. This book did.

This is one that I wish I had read as a teenager. I think I would have appreciated it then? Maybe I would have been too much of an ass, though. I had a lot more class biases back then than I would have cared to admit. I hope I would have at least identified with Frances being bullied by a self-righteous teacher.

The relatively open way sex was addressed surprised me. I'm even more surprised the book isn't prominent on banned book lists! No doubt it has happened, but it certainly isn't linked with moral panics in my mind. I don't tend to do research on books before I start them, preferring to experience them raw. As I read them, I play a game of trying to guess details like date of publication based on the content and style. I started with a guess of 20s or 30s for this one. By the end, particularly after Frances' mom tells her that maybe sleeping with a guy would have been a great experience, I was thinking more like mid-60s at the earliest. Nope, 1943! Pretty astonishing.