White Oleander

White Oleander, the 2002 film, was one of the most shocking and nuanced depictions of motherhood I had ever seen onscreen—I had to read the book. What most transfixed me about the story is, on the surface, Astrid’s mother and foster mothers had everything society tells you should make life a cakewalk: beauty, ingenuity, and, in one case, wealth.

But the truth is, they are all battling a host of demons, ultimately blessing and cursing Astrid with their flawed, life-worn wisdom. Even still, I love that author Janet Fitch never sacrifices the women to easy “bad mother” stereotypes. It’s… show more.

This book struck a chord with me as it masterfully portrays a journey through hardship and transformation. Astrid’s resilience, especially in the haunting absence of her mother, resonated deeply with me as I navigated similar challenges in my own life. Her path to self-discovery and breaking free from generational patterns illustrates the profound strength required for self-reclamation.

Astrid and her mother, Ingrid, live a glamorous life in Los Angeles. Everything seems perfect until Ingrid poisons her boyfriend, Barry, leaving Astrid without any family. Astrid gets thrown to the mercy of the foster care system and finds herself torn away from everything she once held dear: art, beauty, music, and childhood.

Fitch has done the impossible: she has made a beautiful, compelling story out of something that could be written off as tragedy. This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and I’m constantly pushing it on people: “You must read it, really, it’s so… show more.

Janet Fitch achieved a miracle with this novel about a girl rambling through a flawed foster care system after her mother is convicted of a heinous crime.

In a predictable set-up, the mother would be supportive despite her incarceration. She would be a wise person offering the girl advice. But the author had the confidence and skill to make the mother a beautiful monster, a brilliant, malignant poet whose attempts at controlling the girl are frustrated by the physical distance between them.

The girl’s growing awareness of her mother’s destructive potential is set against a series of foster families. I… show more.

This lush book, written in 1994, is now something of a classic.

Ingrid is scorned by a man that she sees as being beneath her so she poisons him, and is sent to prison, leaving her daughter Astrid to navigate a series of foster care and adolescence all on her own.

The sweep of descriptive language is lush and languid as the California it depicts. I read this book repeatedly when it first came out, I felt Astrid’s pain as my own. 

White Oleander tells a story about a young girl growing up the hard way after her mother murders her partner and gets sent to jail. Astrid lives her life in social care going from foster care to foster care facing so many difficult scenarios each time it’s unbelievable. A story of pure love and hate between mother and daughter and the challenges that arise in this abusive relationship. This book is so beautifully written it’s like poetry, I had to read it twice and was not surprised when it was made into a movie. 

It’s been many years since I first read this book, and I am still haunted by the voice of its protagonist. Unlike the other mother-daughter books on this list, White Oleander is fiction, although readers who have clung to toxic mothers or endured hardship, abuse, loneliness, and abandonment, will see the truth on every page. The story and its characters are unforgettable.

The dark and complex relationship between a daughter (Astrid) and her poet mother (Ingrid) is the thrust of this engaging work. The story is seen through the eyes of Astrid as she struggles to find a sense of herself as she moves through an array of foster homes, while the aura of her mother and the crime that has led to her incarceration looms over Astrid’s life.

My copy of White Oleander is tattered, with lime-green post-it notes sticking out from the pages, and sentences, often paragraphs, highlighted throughout the novel. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this haunting, coming-of-age story. I come back to it for two reasons, the clever prose and the relationship between Astrid, the teen narrator, and her mother, in prison for murder. This is how, for instance, Astrid sees herself and her mother: “She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was… show more.

White Oleander tells the story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, who is left to fend for herself in a series of foster homes. The turbulent, difficult mother-daughter relationship in this novel is forever seared into my mind. At its core, this is a novel about finding one's way, no matter what.