COURTESY: GOODREADS.COM
I must admit to an addiction: checking bestseller lists. I like to know what’s climbing the charts, why it’s selling well, what people like about it. Often, this addiction involves reading it myself, although I shy away from seasoned thriller/mystery writers and romance novels.
More and more often, I find that what is on the bestseller list falls into one of two categories: written by an author with a household name (think J.K. Rowling) or has come to be widely known and discussed, such as “The Goldfinch” or more recently, Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See.” When I first saw “The Boston Girl” on the bestseller list late last year, it took me by surprise by not falling into any of the usual categories.
This novel, penned by Anita Diamant, opens by explaining its premise; the reader learns that the granddaughter is conducting an interview of her grandmother, in which the grandmother will discuss “how (she) got to be the woman (she) is today.”
Addie Baum, the ingénue, is a Jewish girl growing up in Boston with parents who immigrated to America a few years before she was born. They lead a modest and often heartbreaking existence, which Addie is determined to escape. Her world opens up in some sense when she joins a girl’s library group and there finds a group of lifelong friends, companionship she had not received until this point in her life. Addie continues to excitedly, humorously and compassionately detail stories of the complicated and yet somehow normal life she lived growing up in Boston.
In some ways, her story is a timeless coming-of-age tale about a girl who has to find a way to make a living and a life in a large, confounding city. However, in some sense, this is also a story of a generation of women who grew up as the children of immigrants and had to decide how they would fit into the changing landscape of this new post-World War I environment and also satisfy the desires of their parents, who are often stuck in the old world in many ways.
This novel was a delight to read, and I found myself flying through the pages. It was a similar experience to eating crème brûlée — mostly sweet and airy with some bittersweet spots to make it worthwhile. And while crème brulee is one of my favorite desserts, I felt that this story deserved more.
There were some difficult, poignant bits, and Diamant touched on a few tough topics, such as rape and abortion, but they were neatly packaged and spelled out in black and white in a way that real life never is.
The novel works tirelessly to be historically accurate, detailing occurrences such as orphan trains, southern lynchings and the movement against child labor. Although I admire the effort to remember these things, I was deeply unsettled by the warm glow that smothered these events in this piece.
The ax murder that Addie witnesses, for example, was only referred to later in the novel because it meant that the narrator received more pie that summer. The book is supposed to be a transcript of a tape-recorded interview, but the writing feels aphoristic and clear in a way that recollection and reminiscence should not come across. As a result, some characters and their experiences fall flat.
Prior to this novel, Diamant was best known for a 1997 feminist fiction. The fire apparent in that piece, “The Red Tent,” is barely a spark in “The Boston Girl.”
It is an easy and enjoyable read but a disappointment to the backbreaking existence that the daughter of an immigrant would’ve had during this period. If you’re looking for a book to quickly fall into and maybe give you the warm-fuzzies, this is not a bad choice. If you are looking for real insight into what life as a young Jewish girl struggling to find where she fits would have been like, look elsewhere.
Alex Martin
