White Oleander - Janet Fitch
To begin with, White Oleander is my all time favorite book. I first read it as a recommendation from my Sophomore English teacher in high school and have been unable to recover from it since then. I am also positive that this book is the perfect book for anyone in a reader's block as it begins with an immediate approach to the melancholia and chaos of a daughter and her mothers life. If anything - read it for the language.
“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Janet Fitch is also inevitably one of my all time favorite authors. In everything she creates she creates with it an art that is designed almost for the broken. White Oleander is so elegantly crafted that I genuinely do not know if I will ever read a book that has affected me as much as this one, not just in terms of plot, but also in poetry. White Oleander is more than a melancholic story, it is art in the most extravagant form. If the world of words and language is your aura, then this book is a complete must read. Fitch weaves together words into cello chords and conducts a symphony that is coherently craftsmanship.
White Oleander is a masterful thread of the complexities between an emotionally abusive mother and her daughter who she ultimately neglects as a consequence of her dark and instinctive character. The very first page of the book immediately jumps forward into the plot. A white oleander is a poisonous flower that is considered so beautiful it is impossible not to touch. In the title itself Fitch crafts an incredible and almost hallucinatory story. The very first page tells:
“Oleander time,” she said. “Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.” She held up her large hand and spread the fingers, let the wind trace itself through. My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander
White Oleander is more than a reading experience. Engaging in the book is like being a part of the muse of a painter. Every sentence carries you into a different dimension where even frustration and pain feels like a symphonic haze. The book encapsulates the traumas of foster children, the hurt of the offspring of the mentally unstable, and the burden of having to walk through life when every road is an intersection of an inevitable crash.
Astrid Magnussen is a twelve year old girl in Los Angeles California whose mother Ingrid is an egocentric manic poet. The story is told through Astrid’s perspective and it carries through her original perception of her mother as someone so beautiful and unearthly that she could be perceived as a mere hallucination and a delicacy untouched by earthbound people. As the story unfolds and Astrid ages her review of her mother becomes clearer as the truth to her identity is much darker than any average person.
“Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Astrid becomes a ward of the foster system after her instinctive mother is imprisoned from a theatrical crime of passion. Although Ingrid remains in prison Astrid is still bound to the memories and letters from her narcissistic and out-worldly manipulative mother. It is impossible to escape a microscopic cord between a narcissist and her daughter.
“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander
The traumatic experiences that Astrid is wielded into reflect abuse in the foster system, and it also reflects hope and resilience. As Astrid learns to love and in the instances she is treated with fairness the universe unavoidably pushes her back into a cycle of cruelty. The book is wielded with words that is not quite poetry, but is strung together so beautifully it dances as an opera. Janet Fitch in this instance is not just a story-teller, but a craftsman of the most divine art.