Tag: dysfunctional families

Day 553: White Oleander

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Cover for White OleanderBest Book of the Week!
This reading of White Oleander is my second, for my book club, although I have not reviewed it before now. I believe I appreciated the novel even more on the re-read.

Astrid Magnussen nearly worships her poet mother Ingrid. At twelve years old, Astrid has already lived an unusual vagabond life with her mother. Now the two have settled for awhile in the dry heat of Los Angeles, reeking of creosote with the forests bursting into flame.

Ingrid, herself stunningly beautiful, believes that nothing is important but beauty. She tells Astrid stories of ruthless Viking ancestors who take what they want, for she sees weakness in Astrid and wants to root it out. She is clearly a narcissist. For pleasure, she brings home beautiful young men and then unceremoniously discards them. She keeps Astrid up all night looking at the stars. Although Astrid fears Ingrid will one day leave her, she is smart enough to realize that with her mother everything is always about Ingrid herself.

Then Ingrid falls in love with Barry, an ordinary man. For once, Astrid feels a little secure, as if she has a father. But when Barry dumps Ingrid for a younger woman, Ingrid becomes insane with rage and does something terrible. She ends up in prison, and Astrid is abandoned to the foster care system.

This novel is sometimes beautiful. The beginning dealing with the relationship between the two and their earlier lives is poetically told. Other times it is brutally powerful, as Astrid is torn from her precisely kept home and thrown into a series of horrendous foster homes. Even more heartbreaking is what happens when she finally finds a loving one.

White Oleander is original and gorgeously written, about the search for love and a safe harbor, about betrayal, madness, self-absorption, and self-discovery. The lovely but poisonous white oleander is a symbol for Ingrid’s motherhood, as Astrid finally realizes she will always ache for her mother’s love and never have what she wants.

Day 267: Black & White

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Cover for Black & WhiteI had an ambivalent reaction to Dani Shapiro’s Black & White. By coincidence, while I was reading it, I read an article about adult survivors of child abuse that helped me focus on what was bothering me about the themes and conclusion of this novel. I’ll talk about that later.

Clara Brodeur has not seen her mother since she left home at the age of 18. She is a seemingly ordinary housewife with a nine-year-old daughter, but she has a secret. Her mother is Ruth Dunne, a world-famous photographer who made Clara’s childhood miserable by documenting it with evocative, nude photos.

Clara’s life is interrupted by a phone call from her older sister Robin telling her that their mother is dying, and she can’t cope anymore. Despite herself, Clara finds herself in New York City, where she is forced to face her feelings about her mother.

The strength of this novel is its finely observed descriptions, especially of Clara’s memories of the photo shoots–both from the point of view of a young child and then overlaid with adult awareness. Shapiro accomplishes the difficult task of explaining only with words both how striking Ruth’s photos must be and why they are disturbing. Clara feels that she has had her life stripped bare for the entire world and her relationship with her mother destroyed because of Ruth’s obsessions.

Of course, the novel evokes questions about art and its importance, whether the creation of an object of art justifies Ruth’s treatment of Clara, the impact of abuse upon the family, and so on. Perhaps I should warn now about spoilers, although I will try not to reveal too much.

Emily Yoffe’s article in Slate deals with how there is often a societal pressure put upon adult survivors of child abuse to reconcile with their abusers  and bring them back into their lives as the abusers get older. She points out the possible destructiveness of this expectation as well as the possibility of more harm to the original victim, or as she puts it better, “the potential psychological cost of reconnecting.”

One of my problems with this book is that it buys wholeheartedly into this assumption that reconciling with and forgiving one’s abuser is automatically healing for the abused, with a much too indulgent and simple-minded conclusion. Robin has been telling Clara “it’s not about you,” and suddenly she realizes that is true. But it is about Clara. Moreover, when Clara asks why her mother didn’t stop, her husband answers “Because she couldn’t.” I’m sure that is true, and Ruth’s form of abuse is admittedly different than sexual or physical abuse, but if you ask a sex offender why he or she doesn’t stop, you’re going to get the same answer.

Shapiro’s novel provides too facile an answer to her heroine’s problems and then wraps everything up in a pretty package. Not a satisfying or particularly realistic ending to a novel of promise.