A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Review

Heads up, the internet is ruining our attention spans. It's one thing if you're reading a novel or in a class, focusing isn't too much of an issue because your brain knows it's supposed to be focusing. But even the concept of internet surfing means that your brain knows it's free to wander, resulting in your getting bored really, really easily and clicking to the next thing that sparks your interest.

It's especially bad with blogs. When I visit a blog, after reading about twenty words all I see is...

Image from here

And the last thing I want to do is bore you! So because I don't have the time to write an English paper and because you don't have the time to read it, I would like to present a new segment. It's called the

of 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

by Betty Smith

And yes that is an allusion to the novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. That's next on my list of things to read.

Alright, so let's get started. 

Although it's considered classic American literature, I didn't have too high of expectations for this one. I just needed something to take to the beach for a long weekend. Turns out, the novel is really quite good! Basically, it's the coming of age story of a young girl, Francie, growing up in tenement housing in the early 1900's. Want more summary than that? Google man. It works wonders ;)

It's about four hundred pages but reads much shorter. I can definitely see how it was easily made into a screenplay and play. It's just a great, entertaining story. Yes there are major themes about the importance of education, the equality of all (women, men, the poor, the wealthy, Irish, Jews, Germans, etc.) and you can learn a lot about American history during an integral time, but I'm not in American lit anymore so that's where the analyzing stops. 

At its core, the novel is just an entertaining and sweet story of a girl and her family. It wasn't life changing or mind altering but I'm happy to have read it. If you like history, definitely read it. If you like stories where good always wins and if you do the right thing you come out on top fine and dandy, read it. It's a feel good, nostalgic sort of book. 

Men can skip it, but women should read it and that's all Imma say about that.

See now, that wasn't so bad, was it?