Book 256: White Oleander
This is a really good book. You may already be aware of that, but if you’re not, I thought you should know. It seems a little early to call the book of the month, but honestly I think that White Oleander is going to be hard to beat, because it was amazing. I already used up my cussword quotient for the day on the previous post, so I can’t use the full flower of superlatives that I would like to, but this is an amazingly good book.
It’s not the story. The story is pretty ordinary, nothing special. It’s the way that Fitch uses language. It almost hurts, it’s so good. Right there on the first page: “Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife.” I read that and thought “ok, I am going to like this book.” And I wasn’t disappointed. Fitch used such beautiful, flowing, graphic language. I don’t really want to see poetic, exactly, but it kind of was. Poetic, I mean. Every word perfectly chosen, every sentence elegantly structured.
“I wanted to crack her open, eat her brain like a soft-boiled egg.”
I also identify with the protagonist in a lot of ways, which may be why my father recommended this book to me. But, as I say, it’s not the story that got me going, it really was the use of language. Fitch took the English language and made it her bitch, and she managed to avoid cliches, repeated images, and all of the other tropes that have been dogging the books I’ve been reading lately.
This may be a first novel, but I think it’s a classic. I don’t even care that it was in Oprah’s Book Club, and that’s probably how people got introduced to it, how it was rescued from the trash heap where so many books languish. This book needs to be read. People need to see how amazing language can be, how perfect and soaring and grotesque.
Demographics:
White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. Published 1999, 390 pages. Fiction.