The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

by Joan

Whenever I’m writing a new novel, I like to immerse myself in the time period, researching not only non-fiction and memoir, but also fiction. When I read the blurb about Anita Diamant’s latest novel, The Boston Girl, about a young Jewish girl born to immigrants in early twentieth-century Boston, I immediately ordered the book.  

The youngest of three sisters, Addie Baum yearns for an education and to become a true American. Her father spends most of his free time at the synagogue and her mother, who speaks primarily Yiddish, complains about life in this strange new country and mourns two boys she lost, one on the boat, another in their first years here. She constantly harps on Addie for wanting more. When Addie says maybe she doesn’t want to get married, Mameh says, “Are you so stupid? Marriage and children are a woman’s crown.”

Addie’s eldest sister Betty is banished from the house for taking a job in a shop so she doesn’t have to do factory work. Celia, the meek and frail middle sister, marries a widower with two small boys and soon becomes worn out from domestic life. Through a kind teacher Addie joins a library group and sneaks off to Rockport lodge during the summer. She befriends a group of girls who refer to themselves as the “mixed nuts,” for among them are Irish, Italian and Jewish, then as now, a nationality as much as a religion. Among these girls she learns compassion and friendship, sharing joy and pain.

Naïve about men, at a dance Addie becomes infatuated with a Coast Guard recruit and despite her friend Filomena’s warnings, leaves the dance with him and later is too embarrassed to admit her friend was right. What follows is a tender story of pre- and post-Depression era Boston, Addie’s quest to learn, to find love, to win her mother’s elusive approval, to eek out a career in journalism in a time when men expected women to fetch coffee for them. There’s a heartbreaking scene late in the book when Addie misunderstands a moment of tenderness with her mother.

The novel is told in flashback, with eighty-five year-old Addie telling her story to her granddaughter. This adds a layer of nostalgia as Addie reflects on how different things were then as now. 

Reminiscent of Francie Nolan in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Addie will steal your heart in this poignant, coming of age tale. If you’re a fan of audio books, Linda Lavin brilliantly voices Addie’s Boston dialect and Jewish inflections.

Impact and Inspiration

It's surely no secret to anyone who reads this blog that we're a bunch of bookworms, the six of us. I'd hate to have to be the arbiter of who has the biggest Dr. Suess hat, but I'd certainly nominate myself as a finalist. Then again, we'd have six finalists, so there you go.

For the past month or so, it's felt like I've done even more reading than usual. (Even as I feel like there is never enough time. Never enough!) Maybe that's because nearly everything I've read lately has hit a nerve, either because it was so honest as to be shattering, or because I've read and admired and thought, Yes. That is it. That is what I want to do. There. It's inspiring, and daunting, and inspiring all over again.

In fact, it's why I write at all, to try to engender the same kind of reaction from readers that I've gotten from some of these books. That's something I think we all crave, to impact the world in some way. For writers, it's through words. For some, that means to make people laugh. For others, writing is the vehicle to help people escape reality and visit a different place magicked up by their pen. Some write to shed a glow of beauty, even fleeting, on readers' lives. Plenty write to expand knowledge by sharing their own.

For me, it's all about the emotion, though I hope other elements come through as well. The words I love most when they land on my page are the ones that make my own skin rise to bumps, the ones that fill my eyes with tears for the characters who have become real to me. And my fervent hope and the reason to continue is so those same words will give rise to other people's goosebumps, thrust hard knots in their throats, force them to rub at their now-blurred eyes to enable them to read to the end.

Here's what I've been reading, and how these books have affected me.

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood and Day After Night by Anita Diamant. Reading these was an exercise in encouragement. One of my manuscripts has a similar style of storytelling, a group of women helping each other through trials with a core character serving as the glue. These are the kinds of stories I've always loved to read, and they reinforced my belief that there is indeed an audience for my own novel.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale. All about the voice and crafting and so well done. Both writers draw a unique main character whose lack of understanding creates both sympathy and empathy--which was surely the point.

Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay and Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan. Harrowing reads both, about women in difficult marriages and worse situations. One set in the early '70s and the other tilting back to that decade, both served as reminders that life as we know it now isn't the way it's always been. Useful for anyone with an ear toward the past, as mine leans. Coupled with beautiful writing and perfectly imperfect characters, these are the kinds of books that stick with me for years, ideas and images popping up randomly like a lost friend calling unexpectedly--with terrible news.

Sleepwalking in Daylight by Elizabeth Flock and Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Both of these were told in alternating viewpoints, and both dealt so bluntly with difficult subjects and themes that I wondered where the heck the authors got the courage to be so honest. Between the crafting of the plots and the sheer gutsiness of storytelling, I saw the kind of writing to which I aspire, galvanizing experiences both. Though not comfortable. Not comfortable at all.

Having It and Eating It by Sabine Durrant. This one blew me away with the plotting, so much so that I outlined it after I read it to better understand exactly how Durrant strung me along in the best way, turning the story realistically just when I thought I'd figured things out, and keeping me just ahead of the main character but never so much that I found her stupid. And then, bam! A satisfying and logical ending I didn't see coming. This is a book I suspect I'll turn to again when I get lost in my own plotting, sort of like the fictitious Edgar Wallace Plot Wheel, but in a good way.

And 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might by Pat Walsh. Need I say more?