Wednesday, November 5, 2008

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith





Content rating: 2.1.2
Category: Classic, coming-of-age
Review: 5/5


We read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for book club. It was an excellent choice. This is a character driven novel, not plot driven, and the characters are rich and deep. The relationships between these wonderful characters are what make this book so powerful. Betty Smith describes these people living in Brooklyn during the 1910's so well that they feel real. Some of the topics we discussed at book club were poverty, pride, family, marriage, love, money, and more. Our book club often meets for about 3 hours because we just love to sit and talk together. Most of the time we discuss the book for about an hour to 90 minutes and then we start talking about other things. With this book, although there were a few tangents, we stuck to the book most of the time. There was that much to talk about. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't this book great? I just read it in September and loved it! We just read it for a virtual new book club that I'm moderating and we discussed it via telephone. It's the type of book that made me realize that I wish I had read it years earlier!

Shelley said...

I loved this one, and it was for a book club also. We had a great discussion too.

Jenn said...

I also love this book. Its my sister in laws favorite and thats why I read it. there is also a movie, but I can't seem to get a hold of it anywhere to watch it.

Julie J. said...

One word - Authentic... Okay, five more words -"GIVING THE BABY THE GUSSIE!" Loved it!!!

Stephanie said...

Yay! I'm so glad you liked this. I adored it- although I read it when I was about 8 months pregnant with my son, so I was hugely uncomfortable while reading it, lol. I also recommend Betty Smith's "Joy In The Morning." Very sweet novel about a newly-married couple. :)

Anonymous said...

I got this book for Christmas, and I didn't know a thing about it, but after reading your review now I'm excited to read it!