free read ☆ eBook or Kindle ePUB ó Janet Fitch
Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid a brilliant poet i. This was a masterful yarn about a complex relationship between mother and daughter It was about the loss of self the journey of finding oneself and most importantly the resilience of the human spirit This wasn't a tale of any ordinary bond between mother and daughter this was a story of the severe dysfunction that occurs when a mother Ingrid is imprisoned for murder and a daughter Astrid is passed around like garbage from one foster home to another This novel explores the intricacies of their relationship It explores the depth of emotion that Astrid feels toward Ingrid ranging from obsessive love to all encompassing hatredJanet Fitch is not just a storyteller She is like Calliope the Greek Muse of epic poetry Fitch spins letters into gold; every word that she chooses is deliberate and precise When you read a book by Fitch it is an experience to savor; letting the story wash over your soul in warm gentle waves Once complete you will feel emotionally exhausted yet wholly renewed I urge you to experience this book in all of its glory; it is not just a book It is every child that has been mistreated in a foster home It is their voice It is their tears It is hope
Janet Fitch ó 3 read
White OleanderMprisoned for murder and her daughter Astrid whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes each its own universe w. This is Astrid’s storyWe meet her first when she is twelve and in Ingrid’s her mother careIngrid 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 oleanders thrived their delicate poisonous blossoms their dagger green leaves We could not sleep in the hot dry nights my mother and I I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blonde hair like a white flame in the light of the three uarter moon I sat next to her and we stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine holding its secret like a poker hand The edge of her white kimono flapped open in the wind and I could see her breast low and full Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife Ingrid also covets beauty in all its many forms Beauty was my mother’s law her religion You could do anything you wanted as long as you were beautiful as long as you did things beautifully If you weren’t you just didn’t exist She had drummed it into my head since I was small She becomes so wrapped up in her own world her own needs that Astrid’s no longer filter through We swam in the hot auamarine of the pool late at night in the clatter of palms and the twinkle of the new scoured sky My mother floated on her back humming to herself “God I love this She splashed gently with her fingers letting her body drift in a slow circle Isn't it funny I am enjoying my hatred so much than I ever enjoyed love Love is tempermental Tiring It makes demands Love uses you Changes its mind” Her eyes were closed Beads of water decorated her face and her hair spread out from her head like jellyfish tendrils “But hatred now That's something you can use Sculpt Wield It's hard or soft however you need it Love humiliates you but hatred cradles you It's so soothing When Ingrid is imprisoned Astrid is fostered out to a series of homes in Los Angeles her mother an ever present part of the baggage that she carries with her This is such a beautifully written story So simple the words arranged to please the ear one after the other melodic in their cadence and rhythm But Astrid’s is not a pretty story I gave her to the uiet boy with short cropped hair and straggly beard followed the fat boy back into the bushes behind the bathrooms He unbuckled his pants pushed them down over his hips I knelt on a bed of pine needles like a supplicant like a sinner Not like a lover He leaned against the white stucco wall of the bathroom as I prayed with him in my mouth his hands in my hairIt is too real too raw to conform to anyone’s preconceived notion of beauty And yet Fitch makes it sing with her beautiful simple words I left walking backwards so I wouldn’t miss a moment of her I hated the idea of going back to Marvel’s so I walked around the block feeling Olivia's arms around me my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house so much like ours and yet not at all And I realised as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality In a single block there could be fifty separate worlds Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next doorAs I read this I became overwhelmed with the number of passages that I wanted to secrete away to take out and read again Perhaps that explained the worn and tattered condition of the book I held within my hands pages yellowing stained and dog eared or soiled in some other way by the fingers of less careful readers Truly I have done it several times now I can let this fall open to any page and find one of these passages That was the thing about words they were clear and specific chair eye stone but when you talked about feelings words were too stiff they were this and not that they couldn't include all the meanings In defining they always left something outDon’t miss a wordread this one for yourselves