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The House Without a Christmas Tree

Gail Rock

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Dec 14, 2018 Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: childrens, general-fiction

The genesis of this slender but excellent novel is somewhat unusual, and more complex in the relationship of novelization to movie than most. In the summer of 1972, Gail Rock (b. 1940), who was then working with the CBS TV network, was chatting with some Jewish co-workers about the December holidays. Curious about Christmas, they asked her for some of her own Christmas experiences. She reached back into the recollection of her own childhood in the small Nebraska town of Valley (pop. 1800) to tel The genesis of this slender but excellent novel is somewhat unusual, and more complex in the relationship of novelization to movie than most. In the summer of 1972, Gail Rock (b. 1940), who was then working with the CBS TV network, was chatting with some Jewish co-workers about the December holidays. Curious about Christmas, they asked her for some of her own Christmas experiences. She reached back into the recollection of her own childhood in the small Nebraska town of Valley (pop. 1800) to tell essentially the story fictionalized here. Entranced, they insisted that she write it down, and playwright Eleanor Perry developed that text into the screenplay for the made-for-TV movie with the same title (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068720/ ), which first aired later that year. Rock herself wrote this novelization in 1974. So the novel has very much of an autobiographical character, which accounts for its realism; Addie Mills is definitely patterned on Rock herself, and Clear River is clearly (pun intended!) Valley. (The Nebraska setting isn't specified explicitly in the book, but references to shoe shopping in Omaha and an aunt in Des Moines provide clues; while I was reading it, I pictured a setting in western Iowa, which wasn't too far off.)

Because of the ten-year-old protagonist/narrator, the publishers marketed this as a kid's book (it has no content inappropriate for kids; the vocabulary and diction are within the reading level of an intelligent child, like Addie herself), and kids will appreciate the illustrations and the fact that it's a quick read with a straightforward, linear plot. But they aren't alone in appreciating those things; many adult readers will as well. Moreover, this serious story about family dynamics, with a fraught father-daughter relationship where both generations have things to learn at its heart, is not "juvenile" in any pejorative sense; it can be appreciated across generations, and has worthwhile messages for readers of any age. Indeed, now over 40 years after it was written, its textured evocation of the America of 1946 might have a special appeal to older readers like myself. (I was born in 1952, and grew up in a small city in eastern Iowa, not an actual small town; but still, the 1946 setting here has much in common with my own childhood.) It's not historical fiction as such (though for kids today, it would read as if it was); but in a real way it brings to life a vanished world lost under an avalanche of social and economic changes --not all of them for the better.

"Heartwarming" is an adjective I associate with advertising copy-writer's hype, and so tend to avoid in my own descriptions of books. But I honestly think it's called for here. I can also say that as far as I can recall, I've never actually cried over a book, and didn't here either; but at the end, I did feel my eyes threatening to tear up, and in a good way. Rock wrote three sequels about Addie. Right now, I'm trying not to get sucked into any more series; but I might read the sequels someday. ...more

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