Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Yay! I’m back (again), and have an excellent book to do a teaser from. I found it really hard coming up with my two sentences because EVERY SENTENCE in this book absolutely aches with beauty. So here is my latest read ‘White Oleander’ by Janet Fitch, pg. 1:
“The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shrivelling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves.”
Reading this is absolute heaven. I don’t want it to ever finish, which is why I’m taking it very slowly. It’s full of magical wordsmithery. Very highly recommended. I think this might be the first book of 2011 to get the five stars from me.
Wordly Obsessions 
Oh, I absolutely LOVED this book…and another Janet Fitch book called Paint it Black.
But White Oleander was the absolute best. You’re right…wordsmithery is the best way to capture the essence of this writer.
Having worked as a social worker for more than three decades, the foster care system is a definite “known quantity” to me.
Hope you savor the book until the very end.
Here’s my TT:
http://rainysnowday.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/teaser-tuesdays-jan-11/
It’s such a fascinating story. I’ve heard a lot about the things that go on in foster care and it can be a bad experience for some children. It’s great to meet characters that are so well-defined.
‘Paint It Black’ will be going on my TBR list for sure.
Makes me think of the oleanders to either side of my grandmother’s front door.
My teaser is here.
Oleanders are such strange plants. I also have memories of them, pink and white ones in particular, that grew near a beach we used to visit when I was a kid.
Sounds fantastic! This is a book I’ve just plain forgotten about. Thanks for reminding me of it 🙂
I’ve had this book on my shelf for forever – sounds like I really need to read it!
See my teaser at Between the Covers
I have always wanted to read this one, but never got around to it. Thanks for reminding me of it!
Reading Lark’s Teaser Tuesday
@Christin, Andrea: You won’t regret it! Books like this don’t come round very often.
Happy Teaser Tuesday!
My teaser is here
Please check out and comment on my interview with a wonderful nonprofit ‘Mom to Madre‘ that helps spread literacy to families and helps mothers adjust to differences in their lives when going from one language to another! Thank you!
Sincerely,
Emma Michaels
http://EmmaMichaels.Blogspot.com
Sounds incredible, gonna add it to my list.
My Teaser Tuesday
What a beautiful teaser. It sounds like a poemm
Hey Novroz! The great thing about the book is it’s like that the whole way through. Effortlessly beautiful imagery. Can’t wait to see the movie.
Fantastic teaser! I really liked this book…so much so I’m thinking about reading it again after reading your teaser and remembering how good White Oleander was.
Enjoy!
It’s one that deserves a re-read I think. That first sentence is such a good hook into the story!
I STRONGLY disliked this book. The plot itself would be really interesting, but in my opinion the writing is so faulty that it sucks every bit of enjoyment this book might have held for me out of it. I don’t find it at all “beautiful” – the book tries so obviously to be “poetic” that the prose is clumsy and meaningless. The run – on sentences this book is populated with are literally stuffed with every metaphor possible. This book often has the feel of an overly melodramatic soap opera. The characters are not very likable, either, and I found I could not sympathize with them. Ingrid is an evil machine who has done no good and can do no good, and Astrid is her damaged daughter who makes bad choices for what seems like no reason at all. I had high hopes for this book when I read the beginning, but the middle is basically a bunch of crudely drawn characters whose best and worst qualities are often greatly exaggerated. Although some of the elements of the mother – daughter relationship are portrayed well, I felt as though I was wading through mud after the fifth metaphor in a row – in one single sentence.
Hi Caroline, thanks for your honest reply 🙂 It’s always good to hear what the other side have to say about a book. Even though I disagree with you about the quality of writing I have immense respect for your reasons for disliking it. I for one am a massive sucker for well constructed metaphors. In my opinion they are a big part of what makes a book interesting and you are absolutely correct, Fitch uses them in abundance. I can’t think of a single book I have given 5/5 stars to that does not use them in some form or another.
You are correct, there is a strong concentration of them in some sentences, but that never really bothered me for some reason. As for the characters, even though there was a part of me that knew Ingrid was a waste of space I couldn’t help being drawn in by her. She is very fragile and vicious at the same time. It all depends on how you read into it. There are women like Ingrid out there who seem to have a knack of destroying the good around them – almost as if they can’t stand the feeling of stability in their lives and would rather everything rested on a knife-edge. And Astrid is very much her mother’s daughter in that respect. Despite this, I could still recognise ‘the struggle’ in both women. I don’t exactly know what that struggle may be or what it aims to prove/ recover, but it definitely exists on some plane/ level in most women’s lives.
What did you think about the use of colour/ tone? How would you have liked the story to unfold? Is the alienation you feel from the fact that Fitch created such flawed characters that are hard to relate to, or discomfort that such characters CAN be created without a vestige of maternal temperance that might unnerve you?
Again, thanks for your opinion. It’s great to have such a well written contradictory review of a book most people love.
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