White Oleander
Janet Fitch, 1999
Contemporary fiction Literary fictionMystery, thriller & crimeFantasy
A girl raised by a brilliant, dangerous mother moves through foster homes, learning that beauty and damage can be the same inheritance. Lyrical, aphoristic prose carries a girl through foster homes under the shadow of a brilliant, dangerous mother, with dread and tenderness side by side.
Feels like dread, tenderness and awe. About death, love and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you are drawn to literary fiction about complicated mothers and daughters and can sit with dark, beautiful language. The prose is lyrical and aphoristic, and the story stays in bleak territory, so it may not suit you if you want plain, light narration.
Why read it
It gives you a sharp look at how beauty and damage can be inherited, in language that stays with you.
A page from the book
Hatred, praise. Love, suspicion. Love, humiliation.
Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you. Janet Fitch.White Oleander was published in 1999, became an Oprah's Book Club pick, and was adapted into a 2002 film.
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Questions readers ask
- Is White Oleander for me?
- You may like it if you are drawn to literary fiction about complicated mothers and daughters and can sit with dark, beautiful language. The prose is lyrical and aphoristic, and the story stays in bleak territory, so it may not suit you if you want plain, light narration.
- What is White Oleander like?
- Lyrical, aphoristic prose carries a girl through foster homes under the shadow of a brilliant, dangerous mother, with dread and tenderness side by side. Feels like dread, tenderness and awe. About death, love and power.
- What should I read after White Oleander?
- If you liked White Oleander, try Does It Hurt? (H.D. Carlton), The Fifth Season (N.K. Jemisin) and Credence (Penelope Douglas).
A taste of the feed
The terrifying arithmetic of needing one person to breathe.
There’s a place in the ocean, so deep, where not a single point of light penetrates through it. And for so long, I’ve been trapped there, unable to breathe. When I met you, you lifted me out of that darkness, and it was the first time I came up for air. You’ve become my oxygen, bella ladra, and I can no longer breathe without you.
Does It Hurt? · H.D. Carlton
She doesn't hate him for being powerful. She hates him for being honest.
This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.
The Fifth Season · N.K. Jemisin
When old neglect finds a fresh place to hurt.
I lock my jaw, swallowing the needles in my throat. Over all the years of nannies and boarding schools and summer camps where I was kept busy and raised by anyone but them, I’d found little pain in anything my parents did anymore. But it seems there are still parts of me to hurt.
Credence · Penelope Douglas
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