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White Oleander

by Janet Fitch (Goodreads Author)

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 137,971 ratings · 3,821 reviews

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of...more

Paperback, 446 pages

Published May 1st 2000 by Back Bay Books (first published January 1st 1999)

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Feb 28, 2013 Christina White rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, literary-fiction, 5-star-reads

Dark, depressing, disturbing, and so beautiful! When the author described the August summer heat I felt it, like hot breath on my neck. I fell in love with Ingrid and her beauty and ideas of the world. Then I became Astrid, and I felt how much she loved her and how bad it hurt to also hate her, but hate Ingrid I did! I would walk away from long reading sessions feeling hardened and detached. It's not an easy read, but I find literature that can make me feel so strongly well deserving of praise....more

36 likes · like · see review

Feb 08, 2013 Arah-Lynda Hay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: top, i-said

This is Astrid’s story.

We meet her first when she is twelve and in Ingrid’s (her mother) care.

Ingrid is a woman of such rare, unearthly beauty as to be most likely found in dreams.

Fitch describes her through Astrid’s eyes, gradually, poetically, using very sparse language, as the story unfolds, with words that sing, the pages glistening with the image reflected from her eyes.

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shrivelling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the...more

18 likes · like · see review

Nov 26, 2007 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: secret members of oprah's book club

Shelves: crazy-ladies, chicklits, california-über-alles

There must be a reason why I've been able to recall many of the books I've read over the years, but that it took me until one of my most restless and procrastibatory nights in front of the blank Word doc to dredge this one up from the recesses of memory, even though I read it within the past year or two.

I'm pretty sure I know what that reason is, too: it's because on some level I'm embarrassed that I read this book, and that I actually really liked it.

I'm pretty sure I know where that embarrassm...more There must be a reason why I've been able to recall many of the books I've read over the years, but that it took me until one of my most restless and procrastibatory nights in front of the blank Word doc to dredge this one up from the recesses of memory, even though I read it within the past year or two.

I'm pretty sure I know what that reason is, too: it's because on some level I'm embarrassed that I read this book, and that I actually really liked it.

I'm pretty sure I know where that embarrassment comes from, too: it's rooted in some pretty deep-level misogyny and discomfort about my most womany womanliness, or something like that anyway....

This book is the most Oprahiest Book Clubby selection I've ever read in my life. It's also the most estrogened-out, hyper-womany fiction I can even begin to think of. All the criticisms and stereotypes I (and a lot of you) hold about lady lit are present here, by the bundle: poetic, even overwrought language; melodramatic plotting; over-the-top characters; vivid, sensual description; almost fetishistic focus on sex, sexuality, and relationships.... aw, crap, I don't even know what my dreadful vestigial stereotypes about women's fiction are, only I'm 10,000% sure this book fulfilled all of them. It's called WHITE FUKKIN OLEANDER, for PETE'S SAKE!!!

Here's where the internalized misogyny comes in, of course, because WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT??? This book was far from perfect, there are some valid and gender-neutral criticisms I have of it, but it was good, and I enjoyed it, and the fact is that I apparently find this somehow embarrassing, and on some level must think I should really be digging on Chuck Palahniuk or Ernest Hemingway or that guy who writes those series books about old-timey sailing ships that middle-aged men love so much.... Like that is way more respectable or something. ARGH!!! Have all these thousands of dollars and book-hours spent on feminist indoctrination been for naught??? I ENJOYED WHITE OLEANDER! Yes, of course it did get a bit too silly for me at times, but on the whole I THOUGHT IT WAS A PRETTY GOOD STORY!

Okay, it was melodramatic, but that's part of what made it good. It's about this blonde shorty with a crazy, really horrid white witch of a psycho blonde poet mother, who is scorned by this chumpy-seeming LA cheeseball in a Hawaiian shirt, and hell hath no fury like a psycho poet lady, the mom kills guy, goes to prison, blah blah blah.... So the kid, Astrid -- or maybe Ingrid? -- I forget -- winds up in foster care, and the book is her bouncing around from LA foster home to foster home and experiencing, as my own mother put it, all these different types of moms.

Like Push, another book I need to review, there are moments you cannot believe the author was able to type with a straight face. You're like, "NO, come ON, this is RIDICULOUS! You can't POSSIBLY make ANOTHER outlandishly bad thing happen to this poor defenseless character! Pull yourself together Janet, I CAN'T take this seriously." Like at one point the girl gets attacked by a dog, and I actually started laughing. BUT NONE OF IT IS MORE RIDICULOUS THAN JUDE THE OBSCURE, WHICH WAS NOT, LAST TIME I CHECKED, PART OF OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB. LADY WRITERS DO NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY ON THIS KIND OF PATHOS!

Anyway, I liked this book. I can't believe I'm so defensive about it! I must really have issues. But does anyone else on here know what I mean? I noticed that NONE of my friends have read this book, which makes me wonder whether there are others among us who have somehow "forgotten," as I had myself, until I sat down tonight to write a paper.

BTW, I tried reading part of this years ago, when the author visited my college writing class (she had gone to my school), and I couldn't choke it down that first time. BUT, Ms. Fitch did tell a good story about Oprah calling her personally to say she was in the book club, which I won't repeat here because... I have run out of characters.(less)

41 likes · like · see review

Jan 12, 2013 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Megan by: Aunt Amy Jane

Shelves: favorites

My aunt bought me this book for Christmas one year and at first I was really disappointed. I thought "Oh, that's nice... because I like to read you just got me the Oprah book club book of the month... thanks." But then I read it, and I'm now convinced that my aunt knows me better than maybe many of my close friends or better than I know myself. Not to be all cheesy and over-identify with something that isn't about me; but this book REALLY hit home for me in describing my relationship with my mot...more

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Jan 15, 2008 Matt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sad girls

this is a horrifying book, not necessarily for the story's content (which IS horrifying), but for it's plot, execution, characterization, and particularly its overcooked writing.

some observations:

1) astrid. the novel's protagonist, a fourteen year old girl, is a thoroughly contradictory character. some people have written that astrid is not your 'average' teenage girl and that she is 'gifted.' if she were such a girl, i would expect much more of her. i'm not a psychologist nor have i ever been...more this is a horrifying book, not necessarily for the story's content (which IS horrifying), but for it's plot, execution, characterization, and particularly its overcooked writing.

some observations:

1) astrid. the novel's protagonist, a fourteen year old girl, is a thoroughly contradictory character. some people have written that astrid is not your 'average' teenage girl and that she is 'gifted.' if she were such a girl, i would expect much more of her. i'm not a psychologist nor have i ever been shot, but i suspect any fourteen year old girl who's mother was sent to prison for murder, who offered herself sexually to a man three times her age, is shot by her first foster mother, performs oral sex on a boy in exchange for 1/2 bag of marijuana would be SEVERLY emotionally disturbed and troubled. astrid, however, seems to care less that she was nearly murdered. instead she focuses on and longs for her sexual encounters with ray. remember, this is a FOURTEEN year old girl. astrid blows her credibility as a narrator very early on because no one who's gone through her experiences would be in as good as shape as she is. it also discredits her as a character, and with a discredited character, the novel doesn't stand a chance. think about a fourteen year old girl you know. now imagine her beaten, shot, mother in prison for murder, sexually loose, and yearning for a lover three times her age. it simply wouldn't happen.

2) the plot: i have trouble with any novel where the plot is advanced by a series of tragedies or dire circumstances. more often than not, it's a gimmick (or crutch) inexperienced writers rely on when realistic ideas for authentic plots run thin. read joan didion or toni morrison (or steinbeck) and how see how they use tragedy--it's real, honest, and most importanly believable. most of the 'white oleander's' is simply too unrealistic.

3) the prose: borderline comical. i'm awe-struck to read how many people have praised fitch's prose. fitch's use of similie is so overdone and forced that it slows the narrative down to a snail's pace. similes should be used judiciously and flow naturally. fitch, on the other hand, find it's necessary to inject as many as four or five similies in just about every paragraph, and most of them just ring false. the 'white' metaphor is also an unfortunate victim. count the number of times fitch uses 'white' to describe astrid, ingrid, clothes, food, dishes, the sky. she beats the 'white' metaphor and never lets the reader decipher it for themselves. the majority of the book is over-described; the sex scenes, in particular, are dreadful. i don't want to read how a fourteen year old remembers every graphic detail of performing oral sex on a middle-aged man. it's too much. a 14 year old girl who's performed oral sex on a man is not going to long for it again. i can tell you that. furthermore: at one point astrid sees a shiny convertible, compares it to a man, and imagines herself climaxing while laying on its hood; during her encounter with ray, she describes the act as riding a horse through the surf. good grief.

4) the characters and uniformly cliched and poorly drawn. astrid's mother is the self-absorbed, feminist poet. her first foster mother is a bible-thumping floozy; her stepmother's boyfriend is the object of astrid's desires, even though he's more then three times her age; the second stepmother is demanding and her husband is quiet and reserved; and of course we have the 'hooker with a heart of gold' who takes astrid under her wing. in fact, the professional prostitute is the only emotionally stable and 'nice' character in the entire 150 pages that i read.

i'm sure that as most of the teenage girls grow up and mature, they'll see 'white oleander' for what is is: an immature novel masquerading as high literature. and i sincerely hope that no more young women identify with astrid in any way. that's the real tragedy.(less)

38 likes · like · see review

Apr 25, 2010 Athira (Reading on a Rainy Day) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, fiction, f-literary

I had heard previously how good/bad this book is. Most people have been powerfully affected by it. They either really liked it or really disliked it. After reading it, I could see how it could sway you in either ways. You could either take the story at face value and be swayed by it, as I did, or you could critically analyze it and call upon its credibility.

My opinion
Janet Fitch writes White Oleander in a very eloquent style. Poetic writing is not some thing I enjoy usually (since I'm pathetic i...more

17 likes · like · see review

Jun 10, 2007 Michael rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary_fiction

Gritted my teeth to get through this and see what happened. The story itself is interesting, but the writing was so fussy and melodramatically overwrought that I wanted to toss the book away. Kept going only because I wanted to understand people's strong response to it.

15 likes · like · see review

Aug 18, 2007 Niya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my all time favorite book. I love the character Astrid, and enjoyed seeing her played by Alison Lohman in the movie. I wish there were more books like this one.

21 likes · like · see review

Jan 16, 2008 Faith-Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-favorites, modern-literature

If nothing else, read this book for the language. White Oleander reads like a poem. It's so beautifully crafted.

55 likes · like · see review

Apr 28, 2013 S.R. Grey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, more-than-5-stars-deserved, poetic-writing

Edit--re-read March 2013

One of the best books I've ever read...still. In fact...

photo tumblr_mbswavveUu1r83eiuo1_500_zpsea9ccfee.gif

The writing is very descriptive, lyrical and poetic. The metaphors (and there are a lot) are spot on-perfect. I highlighted s-o-o-o many passages, and they hit me every time I re-read them.
The story itself is dark and often depressing in the examination of a young girl's relationship with her disturbed mother, and her subsequent journey through the foster care system. And though her mother is cruel, I swear she has...more

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 10, 2011 Smash added it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-reviews, fiction, read-2011, social-work, tough-issues, read-own-hardcopy

This book was an escape from my usual paranormal smut and urban fantasy adventures, and it is so worth the change in scenery. I had to read the book for my Vulnerable Children class, where I am learning about the child welfare system. It was a poignant tale of one girl’s tumultuous journey through the foster care system and will no doubt leave your jaw hanging on many occasion. As a human being, you will be horrified at the life that Astrid must endure after her mother is sent to prison for murd...more

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 16, 2008 Nateah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can't forget her story. It's like a precise etching tatooed on the center of my brain. Her pain is my pain, her fears are my fears, her life...becomes mine. I take every word from her illustrated existance, using it as my own bible to crawl through this enraged wilderness where the grass is made of needles, the trees are crawling with serpants, and the water is too tanged to drink....
I taste the saltiness of her tears as they stream down her face, burning, leaving behind scars of inevitable...more

20 likes · like · see review

Jun 28, 2007 Chloe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I am normally exceedingly wary of anything that Oprah puts her mark on and avoid it like the plague. However, after years of being recommended this book by many people who's opinions on such things I respect I finally pulled it off the bookshelf. Let me be the first to tell you: I have never been more appreciative of my friends. This book was phenomenal!

Following the trials and tribulations of one Astrid Magnusson, the book takes you first from her idyllic life with her poet/ice queen mother, I...more

11 likes · like · see review

Sep 03, 2008 J. Trott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is the tale of a girl with a warrior poetess for a mother. When her mother kills a boyfriend and is imprisoned the girl is thrown into California's foster care system. There she experiences ignorance, abuse, and need, and love in equal measure, and tries to grow up, while struggling with her anger with her mother for abandoning her.

Orphans generally make sympathetic protagonists. One can't help but hope things will get better for someone who has lost everything, who is at the bottom o...more

8 likes · like · see review

Feb 20, 2008 Bonnie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, abandoned

After hearing so much about this Oprah-acclaimed book, I finally sat down to read it. The plot had some major potential and I was getting really interested, right when the protagonist landed in a horrible foster home where she began an illicit affair with her foster mom's 40-year-old boyfriend (did i mention the main character is about 14?). The author vividly describes the sexual details of this relationship, as well as the mom and boyfriend's bedroom behaviors. If that wasn't enough, the day t...more

7 likes · like · see review

Oct 18, 2012 Ipek rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: to-read-this-year

You know,there are some things that makes you a different person,they change you in some way..maybe it is a big cliche but this book changed something in me.I don't know why.maybe it is just because the girl in the book is a little like me,I find something personal in her or she has something I want to have...If I had read it later,maybe 2 or 3 years later,I wouldn't be that impressed..
Anyway,I recommend this amazing book to anyone ,especially who are trying to find themselves or trying to defin...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Kelly rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: enemies

Recommended to Kelly by: Oprah

Shelves: smarty-pants, audiobook

I only wish there were a star less than one. I wish I could remove stars. I wish there were a star deficit rating.

This book almost made me give up reading all together. It is definitely the last book I trusted from Oprah. I still think she owes me money and those days of my life back.

It was page after page of the most depressing writing I've ever read with absolutely no pay off.

12 likes · like · see review

Jul 08, 2012 Xavier Guillaume rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those not afraid to cry

Recommended to Xavier by: Rahdne

White Oleander. Oleander is a beautiful flower. It's whiteness suggests a pure, innocent quality, but it is anything but innocent. Oleander is an extremely poisonous plant, and it works as a good symbol of Astrid's mother Ingrid. Ingrid is extremely beautiful, blonde, pale, tall, graceful. She makes men's heads turn. But she is also wrathful, manipulative, and a murderer. It's hard to see the good in Ingrid, but this book is so complex that the lines between good and bad blur.

What is known is th...more White Oleander. Oleander is a beautiful flower. It's whiteness suggests a pure, innocent quality, but it is anything but innocent. Oleander is an extremely poisonous plant, and it works as a good symbol of Astrid's mother Ingrid. Ingrid is extremely beautiful, blonde, pale, tall, graceful. She makes men's heads turn. But she is also wrathful, manipulative, and a murderer. It's hard to see the good in Ingrid, but this book is so complex that the lines between good and bad blur.

What is known is that this book describes a desire to be loved. It's that clinging sensation humans feel to reach out and be touched and held and loved. Then there is the never-ending pain. Astrid learns that living equals pain, a pain that comes to her no matter where she goes. In some instances she seeks it. In some instances it just happens. But there is this strange relationship between Astrid and Pain. It's like she doesn't want to live in it, but she doesn't know any other way. Because of that, she identifies with her pain, and so, her misery and her self become inseparable.

It's interesting that the book can be so beautiful at times but then describe such gruesome, tragic events. There are some instances of the book that are downright disgusting if one stops to think about them. Yet it's how Astrid narrates her story, which causes the book to not feel as disgusting as one might expect to feel. It's slightly hard to explain. It reminds me of a starving, anorexic girl with pale skin, and bones sticking out of her arms and ribs. It's gruesome. It's tragic. But Astrid sees some deeper truth in that girl. It's like there is beauty and understanding, and tragedy mixed in with hope. Like I said, this book is entirely complex.

It's very intriguing how Astrid views the world. She sees beauty in the weeds, perhaps because she feels like a weed. She feels unwanted, and with reason because she is treated so horribly. Not many good things happen to her. Not many happy moments exist in this book. They do exist, but they're like gems hidden in broken shards of glass and one has to cut oneself a hundred times before one can find them and hold onto them, and only for a moment, where they have to be cast away just because that's the way the world works, and one finds oneself walking through the glass all over again.

So, overall, I really liked the book. The diction is really quite marvelous. Every sentence has a way about it, that lets you feel the emotions that Astrid feels. And the book really encompasses every emotion of the human spectrum. There is pain, and regret, and misery, and hope, and love, and fear, and despair, and paranoia, and disgust, and self-loathing, and confusion, and there is all these things, and in the end there is understanding, or at least a coming to an understanding, which is a nice change to the dark tempo of the novel.

Would I recommend this book? Most definitely. It has a special character to it. In other words, it is a unique book that one can also get lost in. The tragedy is not in your face, it is just like, art that is placed in front of you and is saying, "Here I am. Look at me. Observe. What do you see? What do you feel?" That's what it is. And like how art can be interpreted in so many ways, this book can be too. There are hidden truths in here. This book almost screams TRUTH! It's hard for me not to see it; it's hard for me not to feel it. So, it is 4 stars. I think it could have possibly have been 5 stars if I let myself become completely immersed in the novel. If I felt the pain and was right there with Astrid crying with her, it could have been a 5. I just couldn't let myself lose that much control of my emotions. I've felt my share of pain in my life, and I didn't want to feel that, not like how she feels it. So I looked at her story from a distance. Like I was looking at art on a wall. If one were to step into the painting and live through her life there with her, it would be unbearable almost. It would be too much pain. Yet despite being tragic, it really is a marvelous book.(less)

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Apr 09, 2009 Nicola rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, re-read

Is there a book that you hate and yet you can’t stop re-reading? White Oleander is mine. It’s a wrist-slittingly depressing book and Janet Fitch seems to take masochistic pleasure in inflicting pain on her protagonist. In the world of White Oleander, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

By rights, when I first read this book, perhaps five years ago, I should have finished it, branded it “beautiful but flawed” and never touched it again. Alas, that is not the case. I’ve re-read it at least...more Is there a book that you hate and yet you can’t stop re-reading? White Oleander is mine. It’s a wrist-slittingly depressing book and Janet Fitch seems to take masochistic pleasure in inflicting pain on her protagonist. In the world of White Oleander, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

By rights, when I first read this book, perhaps five years ago, I should have finished it, branded it “beautiful but flawed” and never touched it again. Alas, that is not the case. I’ve re-read it at least five times since then, coming back to it every year, almost compulsively – usually at a time when I want to wallow in misery (the literary equivalent of playing Elliott Smith’s XO on repeat). I love it. And yet, I hate it.

The pain-magnet protagonist is Astrid, who is 12 when her mother goes to jail, leaving her with no family. Over the next six years, she bounces through a series of foster homes across the Los Angeles area. It’s an unhappy premise to start with and Fitch ratchets up the angst as the novel progresses, as if fearful that the reader will grow bored if something catastrophic doesn’t happen to Astrid every 30 pages. The misery is unrelenting.

The flip side is that the book is utterly captivating. As I’ve said, the story is no surprise to me after multiple readings, and yet I’m still enthralled by every page. Fitch’s prose is a little too flowery for my taste – in her descriptions, she gets it right about 70% of the time, but sometimes her similes become nonsense (for example, tears slide down Astrid’s face like razor blades – what does that even mean?). Nonetheless, she evokes the many facets of the Los Angeles area beautifully. Her continuity is breath-taking – Astrid receives a book of Japanese woodcuts for Christmas (a fact which receives a single line) and then, 50 pages later, she describes a scene in terms of a woodcut, subtly drawing contrast on how much her life has changed since Christmas.

Fitch’s characterisation is a joy. The book is very episodic (which is one of my biggest frustrations with it), but the people that fall in and out of Astrid’s life are never less than lovingly drawn. There is nuance to be found in even despicable characters, and Astrid’s friends and lovers are imbued with warmth and humanity, even when they act unethically. Astrid is a profoundly teenaged protagonist, particularly when she makes ferocious, emotional assertions about people she barely knows – and the way that Fitch often uses this to display unreliable narration is particularly skilfully done.

Truthfully, I love this book. I wish I could give it five stars, but Fitch drowns much of what is lovely about the novel in melodrama. If the story had a better structure (less episodic), a more comprehensive ending and less unnecessary angst, I think it would be a more satisfying read. As it stands, I always feel rather short-changed when I come to the end and put it down.

I know I’ll pick it up again next year, though.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 07, 2008 Simeon Berry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fiction-read, literary, literary-read, literary-fiction, literary-fiction-read

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking, “This really sounds like she’s ripping off Kate Braverman.” So I turn to the interview at the back, and lo and behold, she cites Braverman as a “mentor.” If there were any justice in this universe, Braverman would have received royalties from White Oleander and the resulting movie, because Janet Fitch has appropriated her style, her subject matter, and the mood of her books.

Braverman’s Small Craft Warnings and Squandering the Blue are sharply observed...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Cat rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: escapism, meh

Due in part, perhaps, to the influx of "unfortunate teenage girl" novels in the mid-to-late nineties (I think here of books like _She's Come Undone_ and _The Virgin Suicides_), I avoided Fitch's book for a while (the Oprah's Book Club stigma also contributed). And while the story line did manage to keep me up and at it until 2 am last night, I must say: I'm unconvinced.

Also, spoilers. I don't review books to keep them a secret from people who haven't read them; I review them to share my opinion...more Due in part, perhaps, to the influx of "unfortunate teenage girl" novels in the mid-to-late nineties (I think here of books like _She's Come Undone_ and _The Virgin Suicides_), I avoided Fitch's book for a while (the Oprah's Book Club stigma also contributed). And while the story line did manage to keep me up and at it until 2 am last night, I must say: I'm unconvinced.

Also, spoilers. I don't review books to keep them a secret from people who haven't read them; I review them to share my opinions with people who have.

The heroine is a supposedly precocious 12?-year-old girl whose mother, jilted, murders her old lover using some pretty romantic and home-remedy style poisons. Astrid, the daughter, worships her mother based (as we find out later in a kind of tangental and almost unnecessary addition to the denouement) on some major abandonment issues. Her mother, Ingrid, a "poet", is wildly self-absorbed and disregards her daughter except when convenient. Fitch's job at the beginning was to show us Ingrid through Astrid's eyes, and while she does a decent job of alluding to some of the disillusionment that begins to blossom when we hit pre-adolescence, she never lays a real foundation for understanding or feeling of Astrid's desperate, almost hysterical attachment to her mother -- Astrid worships her mother's physicality (enormously sensual), her appreciation of aesthetics (somewhat Cali and cliche) and her poetry (just bad, actually).

After the murder, trial and subsequent imprisonment, Astrid is carted off to -- wait for it -- foster care! As the reader of any late 20th century novel knows well, this bodes the beginning of the "real" story. Because foster parents are all just terrible, messed-up people, either in it for the money or to fulfill some other need. Astrid trails destruction and debris through three or four various foster homes, developing complicated and doomed relationships along the way that only serve to reaffirm her abandonment complex. The only sympathetic person of color in the whole story -- a high-priced call girl named Olivia Johnstone who lives an impossibly rich life laced with jazz, jewelery and jet-setting -- establishes one of Astrid's oft-returned-to realities: "It's a man's world". And yet, Fitch riddles the female characters with so many intensely tragic flaws that halfway through the book one can't help but wonder if she's implying that women are too fucked up to make it a woman's world themselves. Each of the female role-models Astrid finds is almost a caricature of some fatal flaw: gluttony, hypocrisy, despair, lust, while the men remain either sensitive and helpless, or are acquitted of their manly appetites simply because they serve as a backdrop to the relationship between Astrid and the female...but if it's a man's world, and women act the way they do because of men, then why is it okay for the men remain unexamined?

Astrid learns the ropes, as the reader might expect, and in the end bargains with her mother to exchange her tweaked testimony (and potentially her mother's freedom) for tidbits about the past. By this time, so much has happened and Astrid has made so many streetwise decisions that it's difficult to see how the plumbing of the depths of her past (especially the whole thing about Annie...like, who cares? Whether Ingrid was there or not, Astrid was emotionally abandoned the whole time) will really resolve any of her conflict. The final result is simply that Astrid should probably see a therapist or five.

Final Pet Peeve: what's all this about California being a palpable presence in the novel? I won't deny that it was, but I've grown more and more conscious of the fact that there are two separate Californias and I have a hard time with LA authors who behave as though the only California is the California south of San Francisco. It just seems very short-sighted to me. (less)

10 likes · like · see review

Apr 21, 2008 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: four-star-fiction, all-fiction

I'm mildly surprised to find myself giving this book four stars, but what can I say? I ended up really liking a lot of things about the story and the author in general. It would be easy enough to go through and pick out all the flaws in the story, but that's already been done.
Astrid's story is engaging, and there are many colorful characters in the book who are quite well-developed considering their short tenure in Astrid's life. The author skillfully uses small details about each character to...more

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Sep 03, 2007 Madeline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites

Janet Fitch has an amazing gift for writing novels centered around protagonists that are flawed and scarred, while at the same time making her audience identify with and even love these characters because of their imperfections. Take Astrid, the main character of White Oleander. At the beginning of the story, Astrid's mother goes to jail for poisoning an ex-boyfriend and Astrid is placed in a series of foster homes. During the course of the story, Astrid sleeps with her foster father (at age thi...more

6 likes · like · see review

Aug 08, 2007 Adrianne Mathiowetz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I couldn't put this book down for the first half, but the second half really lagged for me. The tragic things that happen to this girl are just too much: I started to feel manipulated into staying interested in it: the plot felt too carefully orchestrated in its horrific developments, like an episode of Ricki Lake or -- dare I say -- Jerry Springer. Just when you start thinking things couldn't get much worse for the protagonist (mom in jail, all possessions lost, sex with foster dad, shot by fos...more

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 20, 2007 Sarah Fisher rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i picked up this book for $5 at borders and thought...hmmm...i'll give it a shot. well, i couldn't put it down. the writing is just incredible, making it easy to get addicted. the writing flows from topic to topic effortlessly. the strength of this book is definitely in the descriptions of the people and places.

the plot on the other hand, while it stays strong through the first half, borders on the ridiculous near the end. the main character is shuffled between foster homes in the LA area and wh...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Alisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Do you remember that episode of Friends when Rachel convinces Joey to read "Little Women," and when he gets to the part of the book where Beth gets sick Joey wants to put the book in the freezer? That is totally how I felt while reading this book. Every tragedy that Astrid endured, every foster home she went to that turned out to be less than nurturing, I didn't think I could continue reading and I just wanted to put the book in the freezer! But Fitch's artful storytelling kept me glued, and I s...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Catherine Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Females

The character wasn't charming or likable, which was why I removed one star. But the realism of her struggle and the deterioration of various human conditions were strikingly well-written. What she rose above in the end wasn't so much as a victor with the benefit of a revelation, but as a remorseful adult regressing to an evil she can't separate from because she's known it all her life (her mother). And her future seemed to be hindered by her weaknesses, which isn't the love she had for her mothe...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 01, 2010 Rhonda Rae Baker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You won't be able to put this one down. A psychological thriller that has many twists and such depth you wonder how anyone could survive and be a normal person.

I was drawn because of the mother-daughter tension and surprised to relate to what was happening because I've known some children manipulated by their parent just as this. It was maddening to see how the mother twisted reality and easy to relate to the daughter who was struggling to find herself amist such deception.

This is definately one...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Shaindel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: nearly anyone...

Recommended to Shaindel by: Kimberly True

This is a fast-paced, fun novel.

My BIG problem with White Oleander is that I was working on my novel, got into a graduate program based on the first four chapters, then went to a different grad school for poetry instead, scrapped novel-writing for a while--and then White Oleander comes out, and I thought--Oh. My. God. That's my novel! Not exactly, but enough to be frustrating that someone else did it first. And so well. So I honestly don't know when I'll get over this and finish the damned thin...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 03, 2013 Madelyn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mother-child-relationships, critically-acclaimed, favorites, mature-content-warning

Best book I've ever read in my entire life thus far!!!!

1 like · like · see review

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Bookoholics Onlin...: White Oleander - Janet Fitch	4	5	13 hours, 19 min ago
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About Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers. As an undergraduate at Reed College, Fitch had decided to become an historian, attracted to its powerful narratives, the scope of events, the colossal personalities, and the potency and breadth of its themes. But when she won a student exchange to Keele University in England, where her pas...more

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Books by Janet Fitch

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A Writer's Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life

Double Vision: Photographs from the Strauss Collection

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Quotes from White Oleander

“ Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.” — 1,304 people liked it

“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.” — 399 people liked it

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