Dayna B. (DaynaAlyson) reviewed on 1/6/2014 + 31 more book reviews

I read this book for the first time when my I was twelve and my mother gave me her grandmother's copy. It was the first book I truly fell in love with and I have loved it ever since. That being said, when my book club chose it as our next read, I was both excited and worried. Even though I read it several times between the ages of twelve and fifteen, I had not read it in alomost 20 years. What if it wasn't as good as I remembered? What if I didn't like it as much now as I did as a young teen? What if I didn't like it at all? Some books are better remembered in the past than revisited in the present (Flowers in the Attic comes immediately to mind), so even though I was thrilled to have an excuse to read it again, I was a little apprehensive. I didn't want my favorite book of all time to be ruined for me.

My worrying was for nothing because this is truly one of the greatest novels ever written.

Oh, how I love this book. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn makes me in love with life, in love with living. It's one of the few books I've ever read that when I got to the end, I was so incredibly sad it was over and I just wanted it to keep going, even though it was already 500 pages! I wanted to follow Francie and the Nolan family forever and I felt as if I was losing a dear friend.

The story takes place in Brooklyn, New York during the early 1900's, up until about 1920, and centers around the impoverished Nolan family, and specifically Francie Nolan, a shy, bookish misfit. Francie's mother works as a janitress, cleaning several tenement buildings in their poor neighborhood to support Francie and her brother Neely because Francie's father is a drunk. It's a heart-wrenching story with many ups and downs and I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say READ IT!

This book makes me want to be poor. Not because the book makes being poor seem great, because it makes plain the pain and suffering poverty causes, particularly at the beginning of the 20th century, but you really got a sense of how not having anything really made the Nolan's have each other, to help each other, to love each other, and to need each other in a way that they wouldn't have if they'd had enough. By the end of the book the Nolan's seem to be finally making their way out of the hard scrabble life and onto something easier and more comfortable than the poverty and grief they have endured, but you get a sense that they will never be as happy close as they were when they had only each other, when they really needed each other and could be there for one another in a way they won't need to be anymore. And to me one of the themes of this book is change. Change is obviously an inevitability and possibly even a necessity, but change is often sad. And even though change can be good, there is almost always a nostalgia for the way things were and even a mourning for what used to be, and so when I reach the end of this book, I feel a certain sadness even though I know the Nolans will be better off.

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