Foiling her, Astrid learns about tenderness from one foster mother and how to stand up for herself from another. Even from prison, Ingrid tries to mold her daughter. In the process, this girl develops a wire-tight inner strength, gains her mother's white-blonde beauty, and achieves some measure of control over their relationship. There were so many missing pieces." Fitch adroitly leads Astrid down a path of sorting out her past and identity. "I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. As Astrid bumps from trailer park to tract house to Hollywood bungalow, White Oleander uncoils her existential anxieties. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her daughter that they are descendants of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1999: Astrid Magnussen, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a mother who is as sharp as a new knife.
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