Review: The Boston Girl

The Boston Girl

by Anita Diamant

Why did you choose this book? the immigrant experient aspect

When did you read this book? April 2015

Who should read this book? readers of historical fiction

Source: library ebook

Here is a synopsis of The Boston Girl from Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today." She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.

My Review

I loved this one! The story is basically a monologue, with 85-year-old Addie telling the story of her life to her granddaughter. I loved Addie’s sense of humor and her perspective on the events of her life! I could hear her speaking in mind, and she sounded EXACTLY like my grandmother! My grandmother was born one year before Addie and was a child of immigrant parents, as was Addie. Unlike Addie, my grandmother was actually born ‘across the pond’ and ‘came over on the boat’ when she was about ten. But Addie’s voice was her voice!

I loved the entire story and found it hard to put down. But one thing I particularly liked was Addie’s ‘matter-of-fact’ telling of her story, without a lot of drama. This was not a romance. While Addie had obviously married, as she was telling this story to her granddaughter, her  story was not a romance. Addie just kind of slipped in there that she met and married her husband; just another fact of her life.

I also enjoyed the perspective of life in this earlier time that I was given. Though there were historical events interspersed throughout Addie’s tale, they were not dealt with in depth, but just mentioned in passed as a way to give context to the events in Addie’s story. If you are looking for a history lesson, you won’t get it here, but you will get a feel for what life was for young woman in America in the early twentieth century. Enjoy!

You can find a reading group guide on the publisher’s website here. You can also view a video of the author introducing her book on the publisher’s site here.

My Rating:  ★★★★1/2    4-1/2 Stars

Tuesday Memes: The Boston Girls

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today." She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.

Opening

1985

Nobody told you?

    Ava, sweetheart, if you ask me to talk about how I got to be the woman I am today, what do you think I’m going to say? I’m flattered you want to interview me. And when Did I ever say no to my favorite grandchild?

    I know I say that to all of my grandchildren and I mean it every single time. That sounds ridiculous or like I’m losing my marbles, but it’s true. When you’re a grandmother you’ll understand.

    And why not? Look at the five of you: a doctor, a social worker, two teachers, and now you.

    Of course they’re going to accept you into that program. Don’t be silly. My father is probably rolling over in his grave, but I think it’s wonderful.

    Don’t tell the rest of them, but you really are my favorite and not only because you’re the youngest. Did you know you are named after me?

    It’s a good story.

My Teaser

    Ha! Those old ladies were probably in their fifties. Being eighty-five gives you perspective. It also gives you arthritis. Maybe you should stitch those pearls of wisdom on a sampler. Do you even know what a sampler is?

page 185

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

On My Radar: January 2015

It’s time for another round of my ‘mini-meme’, On My Radar, in which I highlight books I’ve come across that seem especially interesting. These may be just released books or they may be older books I was not previously aware of, but either way, there is something about them that caught my eye. I haven’t decided if I will actually read any of them yet, but I do want to follow the reviews to see what others think. That’s why they are ON MY RADAR!

If you do a similar post, be sure to link it up below. Maybe I’ll find something else that should be on my radar. And if you do a review of any of the books here, please leave a link in the comments so I can see what you thought of it! It may help me decide what to read next!

Here are some of the books that are currently ON MY RADAR...

On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

“I'm dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.”

Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs - the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.

And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.

What The Lady Wants by Renee Rosen

In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, visionary retail tycoon Marshall Field made his fortune wooing women customers with his famous motto: “Give the lady what she wants.” His legendary charm also won the heart of socialite Delia Spencer and led to an infamous love affair.

The night of the Great Fire, as seventeen-year-old Delia watches the flames rise and consume what was the pioneer town of Chicago, she can’t imagine how much her life, her city, and her whole world are about to change. Nor can she guess that the agent of that change will not simply be the fire, but more so the man she meets that night.…

Leading the way in rebuilding after the fire, Marshall Field reopens his well-known dry goods store and transforms it into something the world has never seen before: a glamorous palace of a department store. He and his powerhouse coterie—including Potter Palmer and George Pullman—usher in the age of robber barons, the American royalty of their generation.

But behind the opulence, their private lives are riddled with scandal and heartbreak. Delia and Marshall first turn to each other out of loneliness, but as their love deepens, they will stand together despite disgrace and ostracism, through an age of devastation and opportunity, when an adolescent Chicago is transformed into the gleaming White City of the Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893.

Lies You Wanted To Hear by James Whitfield Thomson

A deeply moving, beautifully-written picture of how the smallest crack in a relationship slowly, over decades, becomes a canyon too wide to bridge.

When Lucy meets Matt on a blind date, Matt is instantly hooked; he sees Lucy as the fun, sexy, and wickedly smart girl of his dreams. Although she’s still getting over an old lover, Lucy is won over by Matt’s sweet, thoughtful nature. But 20 years later, alone in an empty house trying to imagine the lives of her two young children, Lucy comes to realize that the little lies you tell can create more damage than the truth you’re hiding.

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today." She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.

Review: Day After Night

Day After Night

by Anita Diamant

Why did you choose this book? I loved ‘The Red Tent’ by Anita Diamant, so when I saw this on the shelf, I picked it up

When did you read this book? April 2012

Who should read this book? readers of historical fiction 

Here is a synopsis of ‘Night After Day' from Goodreads, where it rates 3.57 stars.

Source: library  

Anita Diamant's story of four women, refugees from Nazi Europe, who find friendship, love, and salvation in a post-war British camp in Palestine.

My Review 

I picked this book up because I’d read ‘The Red Tent’ by Anita Diamant and enjoyed it. This is a story of four young Jewish women who had different experiences of World War II before they met at Atlit, a camp run by the British to house ‘illegal’ Jewish immigrants after the war. Tedi is Dutch, and was hidden for 2 years before being turned over to the Nazis. Zorah survived a concentration camp. Leonie is a Parisian, who did what she must to survive the war. And Shayndel is a Zionist activist who fought during the war.

I thought this was a great premise, as I’d never known such a camp existed. The people in the camp were basically prisoners, living behind barbed wire and being told when to eat, when to go to bed, and not allowed to leave the camp. It seemed wrong after their experiences of the war, many in concentration camps. At the same time, I guess I can understand regulating immigration. The story did cause me to read more about Atlit. And the was a very quick read. But this particular story just wasn’t that interesting to me. I’m not sure why, but the story never really seemed to start and I ended up reading just to finish. But it is getting decent ratings at Goodreads, so if the subject interests you, give it a try and let me know what you think!

My Rating:  ★★1/2   2-1/2 Stars

Counted for these challenges:

• Support Your Local Library Challenge
• Historical Fiction Challenge