White Oleander (Oprah's Book Club)
The unforgettable story of a young woman's odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption.
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 self-discovery.
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 self-discovery.
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Community Reviews
Absolutely exquisite!
Each sentence is so well-crafted and the structure of this novel, ebbing and flowing with lyrical poeticisms renders Astrid's traumas more palatable (if not digestible)...her Mother Ingrid ofc is an insufferable narcissist - but one cannot help but admire the bohemian bubble she created for the two of them - worshipping diverse artists and art forms, bathing in moonlight, drinking in aesthetic comforts of beauty and fragility and shielding away from harsh realities under thin veils of well-curated and dream like fantasies...
This is a tale of one disturbed, isolated, forgotten, unseen, questioned, exploited, abused, surrendering, overcoming and coming of age; of teenage angst and grappling with tender rawness and sadness, and regret...
It is beauty turned inside out - seeking something that may have never been there at all...
Read this a long time ago, I need to reread it to write a review. From what I remember is was a lot of moving parts with each character. It was a good book.
White oleander has been my favorite book for as long as I can remember.
When I first read the book over a decade ago I can remember it resonating with my own experience in the foster care system and I've held it close since. I read the book again and again over the years and it never gets old.
This book took me a while to read, not because it was a bad book but because there was so much extra going on in my life that I kept forgetting to read the book. I had seen the movie and was presently surprised by events in the book that were left out or were shortened in the movie. I would recommend this book as a read.
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