White Oleander
 | |
| Author | Janet Fitch |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | JADE |
| Genre | Bildungsroman novel |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Co. |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 446 pp |
| ISBN | 0-316-28526-9 |
White Oleander is a 1999 novel by American author Janet Fitch. It is a coming-of-age story about a child (Astrid) who is separated from her mother (Ingrid) and placed in a series of foster homes. The book was a selection by Oprah's Book Club in May 1999.
Plot summary
When the book opens, Astrid Magnussen is a twelve year old girl living in Hollywood, California. She and her mother, artist Ingrid Magnussen, live a solitary life with little outside influence. Ingrid left her husband, Klaus Anders, before Astrid was old enough to remember him and forbade him to contact Astrid after they left. Astrid relies solely on Ingrid and has trouble fitting in at school. However, Ingrid is self-centered, cold-hearted and eccentric. She lives by a set of her own rules and shows little interest in Astrid, sometimes seeming to forget she has a daughter at all. As a result, Astrid fears abandonment above all else.**
Ingrid begins dating a man named Barry Kolker. At first Ingrid is disgusted by his vulgarity and finds him repulsive. Barry continues to woo her and Astrid watches her mother break every self-imposed rule as she becomes more involved with him. Eventually he's revealed as a womanizer, leaving Ingrid shattered and enraged. Numerous attempts at reconciliation leave Ingrid more and more humiliated and culminate with her breaking into Barry's house and spreading a mixture of DMSO, an arthritis drug, and oleander sap all over the surfaces of Barry's home. The DMSO allows the oleander poison to be absorbed into skin, ostensibly killing Barry. She is eventually charged with his murder and sentenced to life in prison. She promises her daughter that she will come back, but Astrid is sent to a series of foster homes.
The first foster family is that of Starr, a former stripper, drug addict, and alcoholic. She has two children of her own, as well as two other foster children. Starr takes in foster children because her own children were in foster care at one time due to her addictions. Despite the fact that he is nearly fifty years old, Astrid has an affair with Starr's boyfriend, Ray. As Ray becomes more and more disinterested in Starr, she relapses. One night, after a loud, drunken argument with Ray over his relationship with Astrid, Starr shoots Astrid with a .38. Astrid suffers some broken bones and stitches from the gunshots and is hospitalized for a few weeks.
Her next home is with the Turlocks. Ed and Marvel are the parents of two small children. In their home, Astrid becomes an unpaid babysitter. Astrid befriends the Turlocks' next-door neighbor, a beautiful African-American woman named Olivia Johnstone. Astrid admires Olivia's beauty, wealth and hedonistic lifestyle. Olivia is a prostitute by profession and is hated by the Turlock family. After befriending Olivia, Astrid begins using drugs and performing oral sex on a boy in a park in exchange for some pot. Olivia teaches Astrid about all of the finer things in life. On her fifteenth birthday, Astrid goes for a walk, and is bitten by a pack of dogs, leaving scars on her arms and face. During the winter break, Astrid is expelled from the Turlock household after accidentally falling asleep at Olivia's house one night.
Next, Astrid is sent to 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 he has AIDS and the girls do not see him much. The other foster girls in the house are all Latino. All the girls in Amelia's household, however, are treated the same in that they are fed dinner, but Amelia keeps a lock on her fridge so the girls starve in the mornings. Astrid starves to the point that she stops menstruating. She resorts to eating unfinished lunches from the garbage at school. Astrid eventually gets a new caseworker who finds her a new placement.
Astrid is taken in by a former actress named Claire Richards, and her husband, Ron. Claire does everything she can to ensure Astrid's comfort. For once, Astrid is doing well in school and pursuing art. Astrid continues corresponding with her mother in prison, but Astrid becomes increasingly bitter towards Ingrid. Claire suspects that Ron is having an affair, and Astrid watches their fights worsen as Ron makes constant trips away from home. After New Years, Claire commits suicide by overdosing. By this point, Astrid is 17.
Astrid is then placed in MacLaren Children's Center (known as Mac), which is known as a final resort for foster kids without a placement. Astrid meets a boy named Paul Trout, and they bond through the shared experience of living in foster care.
Astrid's final home is with Russian immigrant Rena Grushenka. She intentionally chooses Rena over better prospective foster parents because she is devastated by Claire's death, and does not want to become part of a nuclear family. Astrid is afraid it would be too easy to forget the pain she has gone through. At Rena's, she lives with two other teenage girls named Niki and a pregnant girl named Yvonne. Astrid becomes very close friends with Niki and Yvonne and has sex with Rena's boyfriend Sergei, one night after getting high on acid with Niki, Astrid begins to have memories of a woman named Annie.
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 could 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 asks Ingrid about her father and Barry and then Annie, Ingrid is shattered to learn that Astrid remembers Annie at all, and tells Astrid that Annie was a babysitter who Ingrid left Astrid with for over a year, making Astrid realise why she fears abandonment from her mother. Astrid lets Ingrid know how damaged she is because of what Ingrid did to her, even going as far as becoming completely gothic, Astrid gives Ingrid a choice, to have her testify or to have her return to the person her mother knew her as. Astrid ends up not testifying in the case.
Two years later, Astrid is 20 years old and living with Paul in a run down flat in Berlin, Germany. Astrid has spent a lot of her time and effort into buying suitcases and making them into artwork detailing the journey Astrid has taken from her mothers imprisonment to her life with Rena. One afternoon Paul brings home a newspaper article reporting Ingrid's release from prison after winning her appeals trial. Astrid acknowledges the power that her mother still has over her and even reveals her secret dream of going back to California. She never fulfills 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 must abandon Paul, leaving him much like she has been abandoned so many times before. She embraces the life she has lived, the past that has made her who she is and accepts her mother's love, but continues to live the life she leads.
Themes
Much of the novel deals with Astrid's quest to find herself while living in the shadow of her mother.
Her mother Ingrid has all the hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as the book "Will I Ever be Good Enough" by Dr. Karyl McBride portrays in relation to daughtes of such mothers. Astrid in turn, has all the signs of a daughter of a narcissistic mother as written by Nina Brown in her book "Children of the Self-Absorbed". Astrid provides the narcissistic "supply" as the captive attendant to her mother's grandiosity.
The book may also be seen as a memoir, as it is told directly from Astrid's point of view, as if she were recalling the entire novel.
Each new foster home she enters, she goes into a new phase in which ideas are presented to her from different aspects and many different encounters with other characters.
While living her life with her mother, Astrid fears abandonment which is how her mother holds emotional power over her daughter. When her mother does abandon her daughter, and while living with Starr, Astrid begins to selfishly pursue Ray in her desperate need for love and attention, copying her mother's selfish behaviour modelling without any care for Starr and the other children.
At Marvell's home Astrid reaches new levels of depression when she feels used by Marvell. With Amelia, Astrid feels great fear and desperation with more abuse. At Claire's, Astrid finally feels perfectly loved by Claire, a kind of love that she never felt with Ingrid. While in a girls' home Astrid learns how to live in isolation as she doesn't want to love anyone else. And finally when living with Rena, Astrid learns how to live in a life where she chooses to remain independent of her mother by setting boundaries that give Astrid back herself and become "good enough" to survive alone.
This book opens up the little discussed issues of narcissism and emotional abuse that is more prevalent than acknowledged in society. Astrid's journey is one of self-realisation and self-parenting that can be taken as a way out of the hidden miasma of narcissism in families.
Film adaptation
The novel was adapted into a major motion picture released by Warner Bros. Studios in 2002. The film, directed by English director Peter Kosminsky, co-starred actresses Alison Lohman, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Renée Zellweger. With Patrick Fugit & Charles Constant.
External links
- "Making a monster": Salon.com article with the author by Laura Miller
- White Oleander at Oprah's Book Club website