White Oleander
Encyclopedia
White Oleander is a 1999
1999 in literature
The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...

 novel by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch is most famously known as the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. She is a graduate of Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon....

. It is a coming-of-age story about a child (Astrid) who is separated from her mother (Ingrid) and placed in a series of foster homes
Foster care
Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....

. The book was a selection by Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...

 in May 1999 and became a 2002 film.

Plot summary

Astrid Magnussen is a twelve-year-old girl living in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. She and her mother, Ingrid Magnussen, an artist, live a solitary life with little outside influence. Astrid's father, Klaus Anders, left before Astrid was old enough to remember him. Astrid relies solely on Ingrid and has trouble fitting in at school. However, Ingrid is self-centered, cold-hearted and eccentric. She lives by a set of her own rules and shows little interest in Astrid, seeming to forget she has a daughter at all. As a result, Astrid fears abandonment above all else.

Ingrid begins dating a man named Barry Kolker. At first, Ingrid is disgusted by this "goatman", and finds him repulsive. Barry continues to pursue her romantically and Astrid watches her mother break every self-imposed rule as she becomes more involved with him. Eventually, it is revealed that he is cheating on her with younger women, leaving Ingrid shattered and enraged. Numerous attempts at reconciliation leave Ingrid more and more humiliated and culminate with her breaking into Barry's house and spreading a mixture of DMSO
Dimethyl sulfoxide
Dimethyl sulfoxide is an organosulfur compound with the formula 2SO. This colorless liquid is an important polar aprotic solvent that dissolves both polar and nonpolar compounds and is miscible in a wide range of organic solvents as well as water...

, an arthritis drug, and oleander
Oleander
Nerium oleander is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the dogbane family Apocynaceae, toxic in all its parts. It is the only species currently classified in the genus Nerium. It is most commonly known as oleander, from its superficial resemblance to the unrelated olive Olea, but has many other...

 sap all over the surfaces of Barry's home. The DMSO allows the oleander poison to be absorbed into skin, thus killing Barry. She is charged with his murder and sentenced to life in prison. She promises her daughter that she will come back, but Astrid is sent to a series of foster homes.

The first foster family is that of Starr, a former stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...

, and recovering drug addict and alcoholic. She has two children of her own, as well as two other foster children. Starr takes in foster children because her own children were in foster care at one time due to her addictions. Despite the fact that he is old enough to be her father, Astrid has an affair with Starr's live-in boyfriend, Ray. As Ray becomes more and more uninterested in Starr, she relapses. One night, after a loud, drunken argument with Ray over his relationship with Astrid, Starr shoots Astrid with a .38
.38
.38 refers to the type of firearm and firearm cartridges.The .38 is considered a large caliber firearm cartridge; Anything larger than .32 is considered a large caliber, and one of the most common handguns manufactured in the United States...

. Astrid suffers some broken bones and stitches from the gunshots and is hospitalized for a few weeks, and begins abusing the prescription drug Demerol, which is given to her during her stay at the hospital.

Her next home is with the Turlocks. Ed and Marvel are the parents of two small children. In their home, Astrid becomes an unpaid babysitter. Astrid befriends the Turlocks' next-door neighbor, a beautiful African-American woman named Olivia Johnstone. Astrid admires Olivia's beauty, wealth and hedonistic
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....

 lifestyle. Olivia is a prostitute by profession and is hated by the Turlock family for her profession and race. After befriending Olivia, Astrid begins using drugs and performs oral sex on a boy in a park in exchange for marijuana. Olivia teaches Astrid about all of the finer things in life. On her fifteenth birthday, Astrid goes for a walk, and is bitten by a pack of dogs, leaving scars on her arms and face. During the winter break, Astrid is expelled from the Turlock household after getting drunk and falling asleep at Olivia's house one night. In the movie version, this Turlock house as well as the home of Amelia Ramos (see next) are omitted.

Next, Astrid is sent to the home of a Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

 woman named Amelia Ramos. Amelia is an interior designer, originally from Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, and lives in Hollywood, with a large, elegant house. Amelia has a son who has contracted AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

, but the girls do not see him much. The other foster girls in the house are all Latino. All of the girls in Amelia's household, however, are treated the same in that they are fed dinner, but Amelia keeps a lock on her fridge so the girls starve in the mornings. Astrid starves to the point that she stops menstruating. She resorts to eating unfinished lunches from the garbage at school. Astrid eventually gets a new caseworker who finds her a new placement.

Astrid is taken in by a former actress named Claire Richards, and her husband, Ron. Claire does everything she can to ensure Astrid's comfort. For once, Astrid is doing well in school and pursuing art. Astrid continues corresponding with her mother in prison, but Astrid becomes increasingly bitter towards Ingrid. Claire suspects that Ron is having an affair, and Astrid watches their fights worsen as Ron makes constant trips away from home. After New Year's, Claire commits suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 by overdosing. By this point, Astrid is seventeen.

Astrid is then placed in MacLaren Children's Center (known as Mac), which is known as a final resort for foster kids without a placement. Astrid meets an artistic boy named Paul Trout, and they bond through the shared experience of living in foster care and art.

Astrid's final home is with Russian immigrant Rena Grushenka. She intentionally chooses Rena over better prospective foster parents because she is devastated by Claire's death and does not want to become part of a nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...

. Astrid is afraid it would be too easy to forget the pain she has gone through. At Rena's, she lives with two other teenage girls named Niki and a pregnant girl named Yvonne. Astrid becomes very close friends with Niki and Yvonne and has a sexual relationship with Rena's boyfriend, Sergei. One day, after getting high on acid with Niki, Astrid begins to have memories of a woman named Annie.

Meanwhile, Ingrid has begun to build up a group of fans and admirers from prison, who all believe she is innocent. Ingrid and her lawyer begin to build up a case to get Ingrid released from prison. However, their case depends on Astrid — if she testifies that Ingrid did not murder Barry, Ingrid will likely not be sentenced, but if she testifies the truth, Ingrid could not win her case. Astrid realizes that she is in a position of power over her mother, and tells her that unless she answers some of her questions, she will testify against her. Astrid asks Ingrid about Barry, Klaus and then Annie. Ingrid is shattered to learn that Astrid remembers Annie at all, and reveals that Annie was a babysitter who Ingrid left Astrid with for over a year, making Astrid realize why she fears abandonment from her mother. Astrid lets Ingrid know how damaged she is because of what Ingrid did to her. Astrid gives Ingrid a choice, to have her testify, or to have her return to the person her mother knew her as. Ingrid makes the choice not to ask Astrid to lie for her, and lets her go.

Two years later, Astrid is twenty years old and living with Paul in a run down flat in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Astrid spends her time buying suitcases and making them into artwork, detailing the journey Astrid has taken from her mother's imprisonment to her life with Rena. She also realizes that if she returns to California, she must abandon Paul, leaving him much like she has been abandoned so many times before. She embraces her life, the past that has made her who she is, and even her mother.

External links


Differences from the movie adaptation

  • Astrid's experiences in Amelia Ramos's and the Turlocks' home are cut out of the film.

  • In the movie, Ingrid is an artist. In the book, she is a poet.

  • In the movie, Ingrid stays in prison for life. In the book, she is freed.

  • In the book, Astrid has an affair with Rena Grushenka's boyfriend, Sergei. In the movie, he is not featured at all.

  • In the book, Starr is a recovering alcoholic and ex-stripper. In the movie, she says that she is also a recovering cocaine addict.

  • In the book, Astrid remembers Annie, her old babysitter, after taking acid with her friend Niki. In the movie, she remembers Annie on her own, and is often seen drawing her, which Yvonne comments on.
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