A tree grows in Brooklyn

Our Book club met for the second time on 7th Nov in Sharon's house to discuss "A tree grows in Brooklyn". Sharon, Victoria, Elena & I were present. Sharon, the Tea connoisseur, served us pizza and some really good tea.

We started off discussing how different our book covers looked. All of us had different edition of the book. V’s book was the best as it contained images. So we started flipping her book. We pointed out the dickey, saw the big Christmas tree being thrown at Francie and Neely. The tree was way bigger than I had imagined. We were also able to lookup the “tree of heaven”. I did want to see how the spats looked on Neely, that made brooklynites laugh at him. But there were no pictures of the spats.

We discussed how strong the Rommely family women were. The author described them as “Made of invisible steel”. If not for Katie, that family would have fallen apart.

Johnny is a very charming person and an immaculate dresser. He tried hard to impress Katie, like when he took kids fishing, but luck was never on his side. Life seemed to fall apart after the arrival of Francie, made worse by Neely’s arrival. The news of Laurie just pushed him to the edge, resulting in his death. Betty doesn’t send a message to the reader anywhere that Johnny was an irresponsible father. He was not perfect like Katie, but he was no doubt a good father. There are numerous incidents that demonstrate that he’s good father. The most touching of all is the bouquet Francie receives from Sissy on the graduation night, as requested and paid by Johnny. What pushed Johnny to the edge? V pointed out the upbringing of Johnny, the death pillow, which in itself spoke volumes.

Then came the topic of why Katie and Johnny decided to ban Sissy from visiting them. I for one believed it might have been the cigarettes, where as Sharon and Victoria guessed it as condom. After reading out the passage aloud, we came to an agreement that it indeed was a condom.

The lighter part of the novel was when the author talks about Sissy and the Flittmans. The episode at school, when sissy learns that Francie was wetting her pants at school, just showed how comfortable and confident Sissy was about her sexuality. The horse episode where it falls in love with Eve is very comical.

Betty has skillfully laid out the beginnings of Francie’s writing. If not for Katie and the teacher, Francie could have grown up to be pathological liar.

V pointed out that the author was never offensive or opinionated about the Johnny’s alcoholism or Sissy’s promiscuity.

The night went on with great insights from V, which I don’t completely recall. All in all it was a good discussion and we were running out of time.

We are reading “Funny in Parsi” for our next meeting as suggested by S.