Blodeuedd's Monday Review: White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Format: 446 pages, Paperback

Published: September 1, 2001 by Little, Brown and Company

Fiction

Own

This one was well written and also really disturbing. The main character Astrid is placed into foster care after her mother ends up in jail. Her flaky weird compelling mother. A poet who commits a crime of passion.

As for Astrid, oh this child turned teenager is effed up. Even at the end she seems to think she is writing her own story. No, you were used and abused by horrible grotesque men who should have known better. And women for that matter. It is disturbing because she is all in, while I on the outside find it horrifying. And she never seems to realise it.

I did not think I would enjoy it, but I did. In all its sadness

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.