Rating: 
Summary: Predictable, drawn out, lacking excitement
Review: This was one of the most boring books I have ever read. Had difficulty picking it up again after putting it down. I only kept reading it because I thought for sure there was going to some kind of suprise in store for the reader. Did not happen. I found the story unrealistic; one foster home disaster after another. This was the first book I have read from Oprah's recommendations. I found myself even wondering if Oprah had actually read this book. What did Oprah find appealing about this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully Written Gem!
Review: This is a book-lover's delight. Not only is it a touching story--but it is an incredible piece of literature. The text is so romantic, brilliant and alive--I just got lost in Ingrid's world. This author is certainly one to watch--anyone who can make such beautiful words to tell such a painful story is a master. A true storyteller.
Rating: 
Summary: White Oleander grows in seductive but too familiar ground.
Review: Janet Fitch's White Oleander is a novel that intertwines disappointments with surprises for the reader. Perhaps that's appropriate for a novel in which she's woven disappointment on at the end of a magic carpet of heady romantic love ridden by poet Ingrid Magnusson. In the beginning, White Oleander is Ingrid's story. Narrated by Astrid, Ingrid's adolescent daughter, the first few chapters convey how overwhelmed Astrid's young life has been by her self-focused mother. Burning with revenge after being rejected by her unlikely lover Barry, Ingrid's anger, plots and potion-brewing are witnessed by Astrid, who is suffering the loss of Barry in her own way. Through Astrid's narration, Fitch captures beautifully the madness of the woman scorned and the sadness of the lonely child who knows she's been a burden to a free spirit and who wishes for a father. Ingrid, however, is one of the weaknesses of the book. The bewitching woman who lives by her own rules, who is almost destroyed by them, and who uses them to resurrect herself, is a type that literature has seen before. Zenia, from Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride, comes to mind. It's unclear whether it's Fitch's intention or not, but Ingrid is more comical than compelling when she opens her mouth or writes from prison to tell Astrid about their strength and superiority. She speaks of her hate for Barry as if she's at a melodramatic poetry reading: "I press it within my body. As the earth presses a lump of prehistoric dung in heat and crushing weight deep under the ground. I hate him... A jewel is forming inside my body. No, it's not my heart. This is harder, cold and clean. I wrap myself around this new jewel, cradle it within me." Ingrid is too pivotal a character to sound so unreal and silly to the reader, no matter how convinced she is of her own righteousness. After Ingrid is jailed for Barry's murder, it is Astrid's story that truly begins, even though it's a life story strongly influenced by her lethal mother, like a meal laced with arsenic. The reader follows Astrid through the foster care system, from home to home, from disaster to disaster, sharing her fears, her short-lived joys, and her sense of betrayal. Astrid is both realistic and heroic. The reader comes to admire her painfully earned wisdom, her street smarts, as she learns to play the game of getting a better placement with her social worker. In trying to leave one abusive placement, Astrid is forced to decide whether or not she should report her foster mother and help the other girls living there as well as herself. She opts for simply getting herself out as quickly as possible, reasoning out "how it would really play. Joan [the social worker] started her investigation, got transferred to the San Gabriel Valley, and I lost my chance to have a young caseworker who still got excited about her clients." She tells Joan "'That could take a long time. I need out now.'" Although Astrid is a survivor, Fitch has worked admirably to create a believable child. In spite of her wisdom, Astrid makes a vulnerable young girl's mistakes and has a vulnerable girl's wishes. She seeks both a father and a lover in Ray, carpenter and live-in boyfriend of her first foster mother; the scenes of their brief affair are wonderfully constructed from beams of sadness and desire, smelling strongly of new wood. Later, Astrid seeks a mother in Olivia, a beautiful black woman and high class prostitute who lives next door to her second foster family. When Olivia returns home from an extended trip with one of her client-lovers, Astrid greets her with the anger of a lonely adolescent. Her unreasonable sense of betrayal rings true. White Oleander disappoints the reader when it falls prey to the assumptions of late twentieth century fiction. Suburbs are inhabited by hypocritical, racist Mary Kay salesladies and their tired-out husbands; churches are led by lustful ministers; and the most caring, sensitive person that enters Astrid's life is emotionally weak and suicidal. There is much in the final third of White Oleander that is authentic and new, however. Trite characters and environments finally give way to Astrid's last foster home and foster mother, opportunist Rena Grushenko, and to a climax that involves a revelation of Ingrid's regarding Astrid's childhood. While some of the ground is too familiar, White Oleander is still seductive. It's scented with women's perfumes and it intertwines hope and danger. Astrid Magnusson holds the attention of the compassionate reader who wants to see her survive, but her story's strengths also overcome its weaknesses with prose that is as passionate as it is truthful and clean.
Rating:
Summary: As a mother of foster children, I find this novel sadly real
Review: As a mother of many foster children, I found this novel sadly realistic. Too often this is the life of foster children, however far fetched it may seem to the naive reader. I loved Astrid's ability to cope, as often that is all that these lost souls can do. Her mother was very "colorful" but was in affect destroying the heart and soul of her only daughter, and others around, so caught up in there own pain, as we all are, couldn't begin to help her, she had to carve her own way. Excellant book, that exposes the horror of the life of the unwanted.
Rating:
Summary: This book takes you where you have never been.
Review: I was completely taken away by this book. It is not only the story line that comsumes the reader, but it is the why that Janet Fitch writes. She allows the reader to become a part of the characters lives. This is one of the first books that I have read cover to cover in a matter of a few days. It is the best read of the decade.
Rating: 
Summary: I kept waiting for something positive to happen to Astrid
Review: I have never finished a book I didn't like, until now. The only reason I stuck with it was because I was certain that something good, or positive, or uplifting was going to happen. I was sure that this girl was going to "rise from the ashes". Instead she stuck to a miserable life of uncertainty and poverty. I don't think she is a survivor. Instead she is just surviving.
Rating:
Summary: An unusually good book.
Review: This is a wonderful piece of literary art, worth owning. It's a book to savor slowly, for its story, which lacks the contrivances of most popular fiction, for the author's deft insights, and for her gifted use of language. Her character development seems perfectly executed, occurring unnoticed, implied and layered into the story, in contrast to the descriptive drone and tedious dialogue we suffer from most pop authors. I hope the book does well, belying Mickey Spillane's analogy of book sales to food sales ("...There are a lot more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.") This book has spoiled me; since finishing it, I have started, then discarded, a dozen well-reviewed others, so inferior do they seem in comparison. It's better than I can adequately describe.
Rating:
Summary: This is a real life story, sad, but totally believable.
Review: In one way, I found this book sad and depressing, but in another way, uplifting because of how the human spirit can endure and even thrive under terrible circumstances. I thought it was a fabulous story and could not put it down. Made me aware of how many children like Astrid are out there, just trying to survive, and hopefully, succeeding.
Rating:
Summary: Wordy but a Good Story
Review: I had to force the first 50 pages of this book because of the over descriptive text. I'm glad that I stuck with it because it does pull you into Astrid's life. I wanted to know what happens to her. Sometimes I would skip over pages of just descriptions of the sky, leaves, etc but it didn't interfere in the flow of the story.
Rating: 
Summary: A gripping novel that enables you to feel the story.
Review: This is an excellent first novel. I predict that this will be the beginning of a very bright future for this young author!
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