White Oleander
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| Author | Janet Fitch |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Bildungsroman novel |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Co. |
| Released | 1999 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 390 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-316-28526-9 |
White Oleander by Janet Fitch is a coming-of-age story about a child (Astrid) in foster care who is dealing with her separation from her mother. The book was a selection by Oprah's Book Club in May 1999.
In 2002, the novel was turned into a major motion picture released by Warner Bros. Studios. The film, directed by English director Peter Kosminsky, co-starred actresses Alison Lohman, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Renée Zellweger.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is set in modern California. When the story begins, Astrid is twelve years old. She and her beloved mother, poet Ingrid Magnussen, live a sheltered life together, with little male influence. Ingrid was left by her husband Klaus Anders before Astrid was old enough to remember; Astrid has never seen or spoken to her father since then. Astrid, like her mother, is beautiful. She relies solely on Ingrid and has trouble fitting in at school. From the beginning, Ingrid appears to be a caring mother, but the reader also sees that she is self-centered and somewhat cold-hearted. Above all, Ingrid lives by the maxim "Never let a man stay the night."
However, Ingrid breaks her rules with a man named Barry Kolker who was initially not her type. Astrid watches as Ingrid and Barry become more and more involved, then she witnesses her mother's heartbreak when he is revealed to be a horrendous womanizer. Ingrid poisons Barry with the juice of a white oleander. She is charged with his murder and sentenced to over thirty years in prison. She promises her daughter that she will come back, but this doesn't happen. So begins Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes, where she encounters a variety of worlds and people.
The first foster family is that of Starr, a former stripper and drug addict. She has two children of her own, Carolee and Davey, as well as a boyfriend, Ray. Despite a culture that is rough around the edges, Starr could be labeled a "trailer park" Christian. This home, which seems different although suitable at first, is the first of many failures. Despite being fourteen years old, Astrid has an affair with Starr's fifty year old boyfriend, Ray. Suspicious and needy, Starr converts back to her old habit of heavy drinking. One night, after loudly accusing Ray of having sex with the foster child, Starr turns a gun on Astrid.
Although suffering some broken bones and stitches from the shot, Astrid is not fatally injured, and after recovery, her next home is with the Turlocks. Ed and Marvel are an average, cold couple, the parents of two young children. In their home, Astrid becomes an unpaid babysitter. While taking the kids to the park, she begins to smoke marijuana (likely a reminder of Ray) which she bought by trading sexual favors with local teenagers. As an escape from Marvel's wrath, Astrid befriends the Turlocks' next-door neighbour, a beautiful African-American woman named Olivia Johnstone. Astrid admires Olivia's beauty and her hedonistic lifestyle, although she knows that Olivia, as a woman of complete independence, will never think the same of her. Olivia is a prostitute by profession and is hated by the Turlock family. One night Astrid snuck out of the Turlock house to see if Olivia was home but was attacked by dogs on the way there, leaving her with scars. Astrid's association with Olivia leads to her being expelled from the Turlock household after accidentally falling asleep at Olivia's house one night.
Next, Astrid ends up in the home of a Hispanic woman named Amelia Ramos. Amelia is an interior designer, originally from Argentina, and lives in Hollywood, with a huge, elegant house. Amelia has a son, but unfortunately, he has AIDS and the girls don't see him much. The other foster girls in the house are all Latino and are racist towards Astrid. Besides being a white girl, she has pale skin, light blue eyes, and white-blonde hair. However, all the girls in Amelia's household are treated the same. They are fed dinner, but for the most part, Amelia keeps a lock on her fridge, so they starve in the mornings. She even recommends a friend to take in girls, because they are "easy money." Astrid starves to the point that she stops menstruating. She resorts to eating unfinished lunches from the garbage at school. Finally, with the help of a social worker, she is removed from Amelia's household.
With the next family, Astrid's fate seems to change. She becomes the companion of a lonely young woman, Claire Richards, an actress with a workaholic husband, Ron. Loving but weak, Claire does everything she can to ensure Astrid's comfort. For once, Astrid has a regular schedule, is doing well in school and pursuing the art she loves. All the while, Astrid continues corresponding with her mother in prison, but Astrid becomes increasingly bitter towards Ingrid. She settles easily into life with Claire. With Ron, however, this fate takes a turn that will ultimately be tragic. Ron is, perhaps, a well-meaning man, but he is as neglectful of Claire as she is obsessive over him. Claire suspects that Ron is having an affair, because of his frequent trips which he claims are for business purposes. Astrid watches their fights grow worse and as Ron makes constant trips away from home. Claire falls deeper and deeper into depression. Claire also communicates with Ingrid, whom she admires greatly, and Ingrid convinces her that Ron is indeed having an affair, although she hardly knows Claire or Ron. Later, Ingrid tells Astrid that deceiving Claire is too easy, "like drowning kittens." At Christmas, Claire commits suicide by overdosing and taking pills. This leaves Astrid stuck with Ron. Ron lets Astrid stay, but Astrid declines and decides she'd be better off in an orphanage of sorts, MacLaren Children's Center (known as Mac), than with him.
Astrid meets a boy named Paul Trout in the children's center, and when they become friends (much to Astrid's opposition at first, due to the fact that she wanted to be reclusive) people start speculating that they are a couple and mocking them.
Astrid's final home is with Russian immigrant Rena Grushenka. She intentionally chose Rena over better prospective foster parents because she is devastated by Claire's death, and does not want to become part of a "normal" nuclear family. At Rena's, she befriends two other girls, the punker Niki, and pregnant, needy Yvonne. As a reflection of her first foster home, she ends up sleeping with Rena's boyfriend, Sergei (although Astrid is in her last year of high school by this point).
Meanwhile, Ingrid has begun to build up a following of fans and admirers from prison, who all believe she is innocent. Ingrid and her lawyer begin to build up a case to get Ingrid released from prison. However, their case depends on Astrid -- if she testifies that Ingrid did not murder Barry, Ingrid would probably get out, but if she testifies the truth, Ingrid could not win her case. Astrid realizes that she is in a position of power over her mother, and tells her that unless she answers some of her questions, she will testify against her.
Astrid learns a lot about her past, including an incident when, as a very small child, she was left in the care of a neighbor named Annie for a year, while her mother abandoned her to live in Ensenada. She also learns about her father, Klaus Anders. She receives word from her mother's admirers and advocates, who are convinced that Ingrid is innocent. Knowing her mother is guilty, Astrid refuses to testify at first, but is soon convinced to lie to help free Ingrid. However, when the case is brought up, Ingrid tells the court that she refuses to let Astrid speak on her behalf, even if she must carry out her long sentence. From this, Astrid knows that her mother is not all selfishness, and does bear true love for her.
After learning about her father, Klaus, she visits him briefly with his new family. She doesn't feel the completion she once thought she would feel and sought. Astrid moves from California to pursue an artistic career without her mother's art overshadowing her life. She ends up in Berlin with Paul from foster care (now her boyfriend and independent comic artist). She creates suitcases that represent the various stages she has gone through since her mother was imprisoned, beginning with who she was with her mother, to who she became with each family she stayed with, each foster home, and experiences. Together they are living the epitomized lifestyle of the "poor starving artist" traveling frequently from place to place.
Paul brings home a newspaper article reporting Ingrid's released from prison after winning her appeals trial. Astrid acknowledges the power that her mother still has over her and even reveals her secret dreams of going back to California. She never fufills this dream, knowing that too much has happened and she would never fit into the daughter mold her mother wants from her. She also realizes that if she returns to California she abandons Paul, leaving him much like she has been abandoned so many times before. She embraces the life she has lived, the past that haa made her who she is and accepts her mother's love, but continues to live the life she leads.
