The Boston Girl

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

This was a great story to make a four-hour car ride fly right by.  I love the way the author chose to tell Addie's story, as if she were answering her granddaughter's question "How did I get to be the woman I am today?"

I was captured by her initial answer "It started in that library, in the reading club.  That's where I started to be my own person" (11).

I loved the way we saw the passing of history, the big changes in society through Addie's eyes and experiences, even as there was a definite "feminist" flavor through her narrative.  I loved the role education played in Addie's growth, and (as a journalism major myself) I was tickled by the editing of her first newspaper article:  "Mort moved my ending to the beginning, took out all the adjectives, cut the whole thing in half, and made it one hundred percent better" (191).

I could relate to her descriptions of close friendships as there are certain people with whom I too "feel I understand myself better after we spend time together" (111) or I can share thoughts and experiences with and "telling (her) about those things made them seem lighter and less terrible" (287).  I am so thankful for the "Filomenas" in my life.

Addie certainly had her share of difficult times in her life.  I love reading a good book which examines people--who they are, why they do what they do--and this was one of these books.  Her relationship with her mother was especially sad as she never felt loved or accepted by her mom.  "Mameh had changed the least.  She cleaned and cooked and complained.  She wouldn't touch Betty's washing machine; she said it ruined the clothes and didn't get them as clean as she got them with her washboard, and then she groaned about how doing the laundry was killing her back" (234).  Oh, may I not be this person, always critical and complaining!  And she left behind an irreparable scar on her daughter's spirit, even after the mother had died:  "When they lowered the coffin into the ground, I remember thinking, She won't be able to make me feel like there's something wrong with me anymore.  But when the first clump of dirt hit the coffin, I realized that I would never stop wanting my mother to tell me that I was all right and that's when I started to cry" (276).  See how valuable it is to read books, even just a fiction novel?  Here is a perfect example of what NOT to be as a mother.