A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Audiobook Summary
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
The beloved American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century.
From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior–such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce–no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans’ life lacked drama.
By turns heartbreaking and uplifting, the Nolans’ daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life–from “junk day” on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that “cuts right to the heart of life,” hails the New York Times. “If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experience.”
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Audiobook Narrator
Kate Burton is the narrator of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn audiobook that was written by Betty Smith
Kate Burton has made numerous stage, film, and television appearances, and was seen on Broadway most recently in Hedda Gabler and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. She played the title role in Alice in Wonderland with her father, Richard Burton, on PBS.
About the Author(s) of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith is the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Full Details
Narrator | Kate Burton |
Length | 14 hours 55 minutes |
Author | Betty Smith |
Category | |
Publisher | Caedmon |
Release date | July 31, 2005 |
ISBN | 9780060856083 |
Subjects
The publisher of the A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is Caedmon. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Cultural Heritage, Fiction
Additional info
The publisher of the A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is Caedmon. The imprint is Caedmon. It is supplied by Caedmon. The ISBN-13 is 9780060856083.
Global Availability
This book is only available in the United States.
Goodreads Reviews
Maggie
January 05, 2012
"Dear God, let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well-dressed. Let me be sincere- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.""Don't say that. It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong.""Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!""Well, a person can cry for only so long. Then she has to find something else to do with her time.""I know that's what people say- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, you'll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget."
F
November 06, 2017
Loved it from page 1Slow paced and really descriptive but I loved it.I really enjoyed learning about life back then for the NolansHighs and lows of life and daily experience I was so emotionally attached to Francie. She was a brillant character and I loved her to pieces
Debra
November 28, 2017
I had heard of this book quite frequently, but for some reason or another never picked it up. Then years ago, my book club decided to read it. What a Joy! What a Pleasure! I loved reading about this young girl who loved to read as much as I did. How I could relate to her love of going to the library and finding that special book - that treasure! Thus, this book became my treasure. It holds a place on my favorite book list!Francie Nolan is a very poor young girl living in the slums of Williamsburg. Her father is an alcoholic who breezes in and out of their lives. But in Francie's eyes he is a prince. Children often do not see their parent's flaws or perhaps they have the gift of overlooking. She has her father's heart and desperately tries to capture the heart of her hardworking, often harsh, Mother. Her life is rough. She is a girl who loves to look out her front window on Saturday nights, who loves the chalk and short pencils brought home to her. She finds pleasure in the things she can, while enduring hardships such as no or little heat, lack of proper food, loneliness, assault and loss. She has an interesting Aunt who always has a "boyfriend" My grandmother would call her a harlot. I would also call her loving and kind to her niece and nephew.This book stirs the emotions of the reader. There is sadness in this book but there is also survival, hope, strength and determination. The character try their hardest. They are flawed, make mistakes, but always try to do the right thing. Beautifully written book.See more of my reviews at www.openbookpost.com
Ahmad
May 12, 2022
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty SmithA Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a semi-autobiographical 1943 novel written by Betty Smith. The story focuses on an impoverished but aspirational adolescent girl and her family living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, during the first two decades of the 20th century. The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family contentedness in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه آگوست سال2012میلادیعنوان: درختی در بروکلین میروید؛ نویسنده: بتی اسمیت؛ مترجم: کیومرث پارسای؛ تهران: هنرکده، سال1390؛ در508ص؛ شابک9786009245734؛ چاپ دوم سال1391؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20مکتاب «درختی در بروکلین میروید»؛ رمانی نوشته ی «بتی اسمیت» است، که نخستین بار در سال1943میلادی منتشر شد؛ این رمان آمریکایی کلاسیک و بسیار دل انگیز، درباره ی بزرگوار شدن دختری جوان، و داستانی گزنده و تکان دهنده، و سرشار از مهربانی و بیرحمی، خنده و ناراحتی است، و زندگیها، شخصیتها، و رویدادهای هیجان انگیزی را، در ورقهای خویش جای داده است؛داستان دختری جوان، حساس، و آرمانگرا، به نام «فرانسی نولان»، و سالهای تلخ و شیرین و سرنوشت ساز زندگیش، در زاغه های «ویلیامزبورگ»، برای بیش از هفت دهه است، که میلیونها خوانشگر را به وجد آورده، و الهامبخش آنها بوده است؛ تجربه های روزانه ی خانواده ی فراموش نشدنیِ «نولان»، با صداقت و جذابیتی کم مانند در اثری ادبی به نگارش درآمده، که به شکلی درخشان، زمان و مکانی ویژه به همراه لحظاتی بسیار ناب، از تجربه های انسانی، با واژه ها به جلوه درآمده استنقل نمونه متن (نیاکان من خواندن و نوشتن بلد نبودند؛ پدران آنها نیز سواد خواندن و نوشتن نداشتند؛ پدر و مادرم هم به مدرسه نرفتند؛ با این حال، من، «فرانسی نولان»، به کالج میروم! میشنوی، «فرانسی»؟ تو به کالج میروی؟ آه خدای بزرگ!)؛ پایان نقلتاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/02/1402هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Fabian
January 19, 2020
The tree that grows in Brooklyn isn't really about Brooklyn at all. It's an encapsulation of the experience of the immigrant, with the first generation American-born as astonished observer. And liver. From the eyes of ever-evolving Francie, who writes about it all, writing herself out of nightmarish situations (deaths, hunger, & a sexual deviant that lingers in the hallways) and childhood idylls (trips to the candy store... & feeling validated, loved, cared for). She describes things that are funny & tragic at once; because she survives the story--this is a loose autobiography, infused, no doubt, with the novelist's godly fictions--we end up loving her. &, implicitly, we fall in love with family, childhood, life, fiction, history. Even our own America.
Sarah
April 04, 2008
Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is - cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'"The title of this novel refers to a tree that grows persistently up through the concrete and harsh conditions of a poor tenement neighborhood in early 1900s Brooklyn. But it is also a metaphor for the novel's protagonist, Francie Nolan. She is a sweet, innocent girl who grows and flourishes despite a harsh environment of neglect and poverty.I fell in love with Francie. I loved her childlike innocence and the way she could be so delighted with things we take for granted: things like a flower in a brown bowl, freshly sharpened pencils, dancing shadows on her pillow, shiny stars. I love her pluckiness; I loved the way she refused to conform to the mold her teacher tried to force on her, the way she pulls herself out of poverty by working hard, even though it means giving up on some dreams.But the novel is about so much more than just Francie. This is a beautifully moving portrayal of the human condition and the plight of the downtrodden, similar to the work of Steinbeck, though more hopeful. There is so much American pride coming from the point of view of poor immigrants and their children. The heroes of this book are not great men. They are ordinary people. They are flawed. And they are beautiful.I just want to hold all of them tight until they holler out, "Let me go! Let me go!"
Calista
March 27, 2019
This feels autobiographical. It does seem to be based off the childhood experiences of Betty. The beginning went into the history of the Nolan family and I'm sure this set the stage, but it dragged and I almost stopped reading. I felt like it took forever to read this book. It was worth it. The story does grow inside you somehow. This is not the usual genre I read. I also found the first 3/4 of the book very very stressful. They lived poor and there was a stress always about where the money was going to come from. It's good to step into those shoes, but it's still stressful reading for me. They are some tough people. Being a student, living on loans, I have all kinds of fears about money right now and I think this novel tapped into those fears about my future. I gotta move.Francie is our protagonist. She lives in the poor parts of Brooklyn to Irish parents. They are tough. Her mom wants her to have an education to make something of herself and get out of poverty. She makes Francie read some Shakespeare or the Bible every day of her life. The mother does her best to help Francie get ahead in this world in her way. Francie learns she enjoys writing. Where the story really took off for me was the exchange between Francie and her teacher. There is a passage that gave me chills it was so powerful. Francie's father has died and instead of writing her fun and fanciful fluff for her teacher, which she is the number one student in the class, she begins to write about her father. He was a drunk and they had a hard life. Francie goes from making A+ to making Cs. Her teacher quotes, Keats poem 'Truth is beauty and beauty is truth.' She tells Francie that this is what makes a work worth something. Francie tries to defend herself by saying this is her truth. The teacher tells her that beauty is things that lift the heart like beautiful flowers. Drunks, poverty and living in the gutter is not beauty, for we don't want to focus on it. While it does make for difficult subject matter, those things are part of reality and seeing a character find beauty in the gutter is quite beautiful. Francie is insulted and she stops writing. She is wounded and confused and she ends up growing up in that moment. She no longer looks up to the teacher. I think by the work in our hands, Betsy must have gone through something close like this and we can see that if you give your truth, and it is about the hardships of life, it can be beautiful.After this moment, the book got so much better for me and I was engaged. It had me, but I had to read half of it to get there. I love the ending and where Francie ends up. I love that she gets to go to College. This was not a fun book. Parts of this book were work and parts of it were stressful and parts were slow. But there is something that happens going through Francie's journey that make for quite an experience. I love Francie's evolution. The tree in the title is only mentioned a fraction, but it was pretty powerful at the end.I'm glad I struggled through this book and finished it. It was worth the struggle.
SimitudeSims
March 31, 2020
I love this book. The character were so colorful and full of life. It's described so we'll that I feel like I lived there too. No wonder it's a classic. I can't believe it took me so long to read it.
Blake
December 14, 2018
Read concurrently with my son. They don't do characterization like this anymore. Rich, multi-layered, and ultimately a song of hope. One of my fave reads of recent years.
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