NYLONbooks

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, October 2009, 7.5/10.

Written by Better Smith.  Published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

A classic and a real page-turner, even if it is a bit sugar coated.  If one doesn’t mind the fact that a happy ending is signalled almost from the start, and that a false premise (no matter how nice it is to believe, and perhaps doubly false due to its application to a woman) of self-empowerment is espoused, there is little negative to write.  Clearly semi-autobiographical, the book offers an amazing insight into tenement living in Brooklyn in the early twentieth century, and the unbelievable poverty and struggles that went with it.  Combining this historical picture with a fast moving storyline based around an interesting set of characters and their families in a rapidly modernizing world, the author has produced a long and engrossing novel.