Janet Fitch’s
White Oleander delivers to the reader feelings of empathy,
sadness, resolve and finally triumph for the protagonist, a young girl named Astrid Magnussen. It is a novel that is about relationships, predominantly between mother and daughter. However, it also includes other types of relationships as well.
In the beginning of the novel, Astrid is only 12 years old. She is the only child of Ingrid Magnussen, a poet and artist, living in Los Angeles, California. They live a lonely life; Ingrid’s husband, Klaus Anders, left them when Astrid was only a baby. Astrid has no memory of her father. Ingrid will not speak of him to her daughter and forbade Klaus from contacting Astrid after he left. Astrid is a very lonely girl who relies on her mother for her sole companionship. She is a loner at school and is considered to be a bit different. Astrid adores her mother and admires her for her fascinating but deadly beauty: "Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife. (1)".
Although, Ingrid seemingly loves her daughter, it is a cold and distant kind of love. Her cynicism about life and love is guised as "strength" and wrapped up in lingo designed to impart some sort of false pride about Scandinavian heritage: "We received our coloring from Norsemen...hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees..." (4) Ingrid is in her own self-centered world and forgets that she even has a daughter: "But how I envied the way their mothers sat on their beds and asked what they were thinking. My mother was not in the least bit curious about me. I often wondered what she thought I was, a dog she could tie in front of the store, a parrot on her shoulder?" She ignores Astrid’s needs and places her own first . A selfish, cold and bitter woman with unorthodox ideas about life and men, Ingrid tries to impart these ideas to her daughter; however, Astrid secretly does not really believe them: "Men," she said, "No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy." (14). Ingrid grows white oleanders in her garden, a very beautiful and resilient yet deadly flower.
Ingrid meets a man named Barry Kolker who, at first, woos her relentlessly. Ingrid is repulsed by him but
eventually becomes involved with him, breaking all of her self-imposed rules about men. However, when it is revealed that he is unfaithful to her and eventually rejects her, Ingrid becomes angry. Her efforts to be reconciled to Barry fail and she becomes enraged. She eventually breaks into Barry’s house and spreads a poisonous mixture of DMSO, a drug that can be absorbed into the skin and oleander poison throughout, killing Barry.
Ingrid is indicted for the murder of Kolker and is sentenced to life imprisonment, leaving Astrid alone. When the police come to arrest Ingrid, she vows that she will be back in a few days but is placed in prison. This is the beginning of a downward spiral for Astrid; she is placed in one foster home after another, suffering betrayals and rejection along the way. When she visits her mom in prison, her mother always finds ways to sabotage and destroy Astrid’s temporary happiness in the present foster family that she is in. A lady whom Astrid has become quite close to, Claire, eventually commits suicide at the encouragement of Ingrid.
Astrid eventually comes of age and meets a young man in the youth services center whom she bonds with and marries. She has since cut off all ties with her mother because she realizes that her mother is destructive to her.
White Oleander is basically a novel about survival, one of a daughter enduring the rejection, pain and loneliness of a
relationship with her mother. It is a dangerous and toxic relationship that is unrequited for the daughter. This relationship is every bit as beautiful and poignant yet poisonous as the white oleander itself. And yet, despite the agony and sorrow that this relationship has brought to the daughter, there is still a longing for a mother, a haunting that won’t go away, a void that will not be filled: "I could see my blurred image, but also my mother’s face shimmering on a rooftop over an unknowable city, talking to the three-quarter moon. I wanted to hear what she was saying...It was a secret wanting, like a song I couldn’t stop humming, or loving someone I could never have..."(390).
White Oleander is an unforgettable novel, not one to be missed.