{"id":448,"date":"2009-07-16T21:43:37","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T01:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=448"},"modified":"2010-03-21T14:22:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T18:22:18","slug":"fiction-betty-smith-a-tree-grows-in-brooklyn-ny-perrenial-classics-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/fiction-betty-smith-a-tree-grows-in-brooklyn-ny-perrenial-classics-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (NY: Perennial Classics, 1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"betty-smith\"<\/a>

Click the image to buy a copy.<\/p><\/div>\n

Once More to Brooklyn with Betty<\/strong> by Kevin R. Kosar, November 17, 2007<\/p>\n

I actually did not especially enjoy the first 100 pages of this novel from 1943. The central character, Francie Nolan, a child from a hardscrabble Irish-Austrian family in Brooklyn, came off as a bit idealized and saccharine. Then, though, the book really took off.<\/p>\n

The descriptions of early 20th century Williamsburg\/Greenpoint, where I once lived, were rich. Betty Smith had an amazing eye for detail. So many rich yarns, all hung about the coming of age tale of Francie.<\/p>\n

For a book written in the first half of the 20th century, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn<\/em> touches on edgy subject matter, such as marital disharmony, alcoholism, and child molestation.\u00a0 Pair this book with William H. Whyte’s socioolgical study, Street Corner Society<\/a>, and you’ll get a great feel for what life in the poor part of a big eastern city was like between 1900 and 1940. (While A Tree Grows in Brooklyn<\/em> is a fictional account of life from a young female’s perspective, Street Corner Society<\/em> is a nonfictional examination of the world of adolescent and post adolescent males.)<\/p>\n

I own an awful lot of books and I struggle to find shelf space for all of them. In recent years, I’ve begun to prune my collection, getting rid of books that I won’t likely crack again. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn<\/em>, though, will stay on the shelf. It is worthy of at least one more read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once More to Brooklyn with Betty by Kevin R. Kosar, November 17, 2007 I actually did not especially enjoy the first 100 pages of this novel from 1943. The central character, Francie Nolan, a child from a hardscrabble Irish-Austrian family in Brooklyn, came off as a bit idealized and saccharine. Then, though, the book really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-7e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1027,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}