This was a listen rather than a read.If you have an mp3 player or iPod and a subscription to Audible, download it immediately. Kate Burton's narration is wonderful. A Brooklynite reviewer on Audible says that Burton's accent is perfect.

As an English major and a librarian, I've been aware of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for many years.I never got around to reading it, partly because I had it tagged as a young girl's coming of age story.Dan Schneider, in his review on Cosmoetica put off reading it

...mainly because it had a reputation as an Oprah Winfrey sort of book, meaning I thought it must be one of those tomes filled with good intentions but short on literary merit.

Schnieder takes exception at calling it a coming of age story -

First off, it is not a coming of age tale, although Francie does come of age. Were that all it was we would not get so intimately involved with nearly a dozen other characters- even Francie’s wacky Uncle Flittman, who loses his mind after he’s kicked in the head by his horse.

A Wikipedia article calls A Tree Grows in Brooklyn a disguised autobiography since many of the characters are base on actual people author Betty Smith knew growing up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As a story, it shows us the life of Francie Nolan from age 11 to 16 in the early part of the twentieth century - concluding in 1918. The Nolans are among the ground-down poor and we see how they lived, shopped, educated, worked, ate, loved, worshipped, dealt with crises, handled politics. Smith's beautifully written book makes you feel what it was like to be a kid in Brooklyn.There are many memorable scenes: the mother, Katie, getting the children to play a game of Arctic explorer because there was so little food in the house, the instructions Katie gives francie when she send her out to shop for dinner; Francie assigning characters to numbers and making up stories to learn math; Katie taking a loaf of stale bread and making a meal of it; the operations of the Democratic political machine; the librarian who won't make eye contact with children; the brutality of the education system; the relationship with the Jewish merchants.Smith immerses you in the lives of these people and by the end you feel you know Katie the long suffering mother who keeps the family going, Johnny Nolan the loving but alcoholic father, brother Neely, Aunt Sissy who desires a child of her own above all things, and the host of supporting characters Francie encounters.

I'm not sure how to describe Smith's style. Lyrical, perhaps.In any case, she knows how to put words - the right words and not too many of them - together. She includes many descriptions but rather than being tiresome, the reader is pulled into them, captivated by the way she describes everyday things.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a book I plan to reread. If you haven't read it I hope you will pick up a copy and find it as moving as I did.