It's been a while since I've read Janet Fitch's White Oleander (1999), but I feel that my Bookfest couldn't possibly be complete without reviewing it. Everyone who has met me since I've devoured this wonderful piece of literature has probably heard me enthuse about it for hours on end and/or been pressured into reading it *asap*. What's the big deal, you ask? Let me show you!
White Oleander is essentially a coming-of-age story of young Astrid Magnussen, the story's narrator, who at the beginning of the novel lives in Los Angeles with her Swedish mother Ingrid, a poet and artist. Her father Klaus left the family when Astrid was still a baby. As a result, Ingrid has become head-strong and excessively proud, dealing with her many lovers and admirers in a pragmatic, detached way: "Never let a man stay the night!" is one of her mantras which she keeps repeating to her teenage daughter (see excerpt below). Hence, the latter immediately senses that something is up when one of Ingrid's conquests, a rather unimaginative and flashy man called Barry Kolker, does get to stay the night, and indeed several nights in a row. Ingrid not only breaks this, but all of her self-imposed rules for dating, and falls head over heels into a heated love affair. Astrid, endowed with a superior sense of premonition, feels restless and agitated throughout this time, sensing that an unavoidable disaster is about to hit.
And hit it does: It is soon revealed that Barry has been cheating on his girlfriend with younger women and does not reciprocate Ingrid's feelings as ardently as she would like him to. The discovery leaves Ingrid devastated and enraged, and with the conviction that Barry, as all attempts at reconciliation fail, must be destroyed. Her plan is eventually carried out by breaking into his house one night and rubbing the sap of white oleanders, a poisonous plant, onto the surfaces of his furniture. When Barry arrives home, the poison is absorbed by his skin and he dies a painful death. Ingrid, who had no intention of hiding or fleeing from the crime, is arrested soon after and sentenced to a life in prison. For her daughter Alison, this marks the beginning of an Odyssey from one traumatic foster home to the next. In the course of almost ten years, she gets to live with a range of bizarre, loving, scary, and deranged foster mothers, including Starr, a former stripper and recovering alcoholic, and Claire, a devoted, yet heavily depressed former actress whose husband preferably spends his time on transatlantic 'business' trips.
My edition (Virago Press, see above) tells me that Oprah Winfrey in her famed book club referred to White Oleander as "liquid poetry", which frankly I'm not quite sure what it means (what would "solid poetry" be, for contrast? Robinson Jeffers' "Oh lovely rock"?), but then again who am I to disagree with Oprah.
The attribute "poetic" does suggest itself when one attempts to describe Fitch's beautiful, carefully crafted prose. Ingrid is a book fanatic and an intellectual, and she doesn't tire to supply her daughter with reading lists and poetry collections, even from prison. Her way of seeing the world as a story of her own making also informs the novel's style and narrative progression, which makes it a dazzling read throughout. The novel covers a lot of ground, starting with twelve-year-old Astrid and ending well into her adult life. As a consequence, there is a lot of action to drive the plot forward rapidly, but Fitch manages to balance the fast pace with episodes of reflection that give us a deeper insight into the narrator's emotional world. It is in these moments of introspection that Fitch's talent for poignant style and virtuosic storytelling is truly allowed to shine.
What destines this book, in my humble opinion, to become a future classic, apart from Fitch's elegant prose and confident grasp of her craft, are the manifold, complex and multi-dimensional female characters she invents. Ingrid is a great matriarch and femme fatale, but she's also an artist and an intellectual, and a murderer. Her absent presence in her daughter's life haunts the story from beginning to end, and the reader will share Astrid's ambiguous, co-existing feelings of the strongest love, most ardent devotion, and bitter hatred for her mother. As Ingrid keeps reminding her daughter, she considers herself a descendant of the Vikings, who distinguished themselves by their savagery, fierceness, and unbreakable will to survive. Quite a unique choice of role models, I'd say...
And hit it does: It is soon revealed that Barry has been cheating on his girlfriend with younger women and does not reciprocate Ingrid's feelings as ardently as she would like him to. The discovery leaves Ingrid devastated and enraged, and with the conviction that Barry, as all attempts at reconciliation fail, must be destroyed. Her plan is eventually carried out by breaking into his house one night and rubbing the sap of white oleanders, a poisonous plant, onto the surfaces of his furniture. When Barry arrives home, the poison is absorbed by his skin and he dies a painful death. Ingrid, who had no intention of hiding or fleeing from the crime, is arrested soon after and sentenced to a life in prison. For her daughter Alison, this marks the beginning of an Odyssey from one traumatic foster home to the next. In the course of almost ten years, she gets to live with a range of bizarre, loving, scary, and deranged foster mothers, including Starr, a former stripper and recovering alcoholic, and Claire, a devoted, yet heavily depressed former actress whose husband preferably spends his time on transatlantic 'business' trips.
My edition (Virago Press, see above) tells me that Oprah Winfrey in her famed book club referred to White Oleander as "liquid poetry", which frankly I'm not quite sure what it means (what would "solid poetry" be, for contrast? Robinson Jeffers' "Oh lovely rock"?), but then again who am I to disagree with Oprah.
The attribute "poetic" does suggest itself when one attempts to describe Fitch's beautiful, carefully crafted prose. Ingrid is a book fanatic and an intellectual, and she doesn't tire to supply her daughter with reading lists and poetry collections, even from prison. Her way of seeing the world as a story of her own making also informs the novel's style and narrative progression, which makes it a dazzling read throughout. The novel covers a lot of ground, starting with twelve-year-old Astrid and ending well into her adult life. As a consequence, there is a lot of action to drive the plot forward rapidly, but Fitch manages to balance the fast pace with episodes of reflection that give us a deeper insight into the narrator's emotional world. It is in these moments of introspection that Fitch's talent for poignant style and virtuosic storytelling is truly allowed to shine.
What destines this book, in my humble opinion, to become a future classic, apart from Fitch's elegant prose and confident grasp of her craft, are the manifold, complex and multi-dimensional female characters she invents. Ingrid is a great matriarch and femme fatale, but she's also an artist and an intellectual, and a murderer. Her absent presence in her daughter's life haunts the story from beginning to end, and the reader will share Astrid's ambiguous, co-existing feelings of the strongest love, most ardent devotion, and bitter hatred for her mother. As Ingrid keeps reminding her daughter, she considers herself a descendant of the Vikings, who distinguished themselves by their savagery, fierceness, and unbreakable will to survive. Quite a unique choice of role models, I'd say...
Astrid's foster mums seem to capture the whole spectrum of female expression; their failures, struggles, hopes, and despair resonate with the larger theme of women's search for (self) love and identity. Finally, Astrid herself is a character that the reader will not find hard to identify with: Her development from an abandoned, fear-ridden child to a young, heavily scarred woman who has, however, learned to listen to her own voice is mesmerizing and inspiring, particularly because the Bildungsroman has since its conception (attributed to J.W. Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 1795-96) been a male-dominated genre. First defined by German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey in his biography Das Leben Schleiermachers (1870), Bildungsromane
"present the youth of their times as he steps out into life in blissful ignorance, searching for related souls, experiencing friendship and love, as he then struggles with the hard realities of the world, in manifold encounters with life, matures, finds himself, and comes to know his mission in the world."This famous and often-cited definition has influenced both the production and the academic treatment of classic coming-of-age stories ever since, and the use of the male pronoun is certainly no coincidence. From Gustave Flaubert's Sentimental Education (1869) to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951), female characters in the classic Bildungsroman are seldom more than literary foils, furthering or hindering the male hero's education and supporting the development of his character by presenting an "ordeal by love", a defining element of the genre (see Jerome Buckley's Season of Youth, 1974, for a overview of the Bildungsroman's key narrative tropes). In a sense, women are hence othered to contrast with the hero’s search of identity, finally leading him to maturation.
Viewed in this context, White Oleander offers a valuable female perspective on what is essentially still very much a boys' club. Its discussion of Astrid's blooming sexuality, the creation of an independent persona, and, most pronounced, the emancipation from her overbearing mother are central milestones in the development of her character. In the end, it is not by her relationships to other people - whether sexual, romantic, paternal, or otherwise - that she matures into what the novel depicts as her 'healed', if not perfect self, but through the confident exploration of her own artistic voice. The depiction of Astrid's personal growth harks back to the great female coming-of-age novels of our time, though few in number, such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963).
Researching online for this review, I discovered that the book was almost instantly adapted into an eponymous motion picture with an all-star cast, including Michelle Pfeiffer as Ingrid, alongside Robin Wright as Astrid's first foster mom Starr (i.e. a role *quite* unlike House of Cards' Claire Underwood) and Drew Barrymore as Claire. The movie might appear a bit heavy on the melodrama, particularly in the somewhat soppy trailer (and in my imagination, Ingrid looked a lot more like Tilda Swinton than Michelle Pfeiffer...), but be assured that it doesn't do full justice to the book: White Oleander is an engrossing and graceful novel that will stay with you long after you've read the last page.
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