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Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" has been passed down through at least three or four generations and is highly regarded as a classic novel perfect for any young adult bent on entering adulthood and escaping from the gaping clutches of a complicated childhood.
While it was not for those reasons that I first picked up "Brooklyn," I came to regard it as one of the finest books that I had ever read. At first glance, it is a very deceitful book: short; words spaced nicely apart; and, a largish font size. However, as I began to become more enveloped in the life of a young Brooklyn girl dreaming of becoming big, I realized that this tale was not as easy as the superficial first glance had led me to believe.
For one, Francie's sufferings and trials from being the unloved child gave me a special, odd sort of comfort. If she could survive-no, flourish-living in the slums of Brooklyn with a drunk Irish father and a mother who was not always there for her, why could I not do so in absolute comfort? (Granted, my father is not a drunk, nor is he Irish; and my mother is always there for me. Still, as every young adult feels at one point during this trying time, I have often thought that there was no one to whom I could turn for steady support)
Secondly, Betty Smith wrote the novel in a fluid, page-turning manner. Her every word supports and encourages the next, while also performing the duty of enticing the reader to keep marching onward. She writes simply and plainly, a very modern woman in a time where their position in society was shifting.
She created in Francie a heroine worthy of comparison to Jane Austen's beloved Elizabeth Bennet or Elinor Dashwood. Bold, daring, smart, and at the same time reserved, wise, creative, and thoughtful, Smith wrote a protagonist not only for the shifting ways of the early 20th century, but for all time.