What is the book White Oleander about?

i think i am goin to read it for my phsycology class does it have anything to do with bipolar?

What is the book White Oleander about?
This is an extraordinary book.

I'm not sure if it has to do with bipolar.

It's about a girl who's mother kills her lover and therefore, she is thrown from foster home to foster home. She meets many types of people in her life before she becomes a woman and her mother makes her life a living hell, even behind bars.



The book is about the power a mother with self-esteem issues has over her daughter. It's a must read even is you don't read it for class. It's also a movie.
Reply:noooo......... its about a mother who kills some guy who cheated on her and her daughter who was put into foster care.
Reply:i just finished reading it...i liked it better than the movie.

white oleander by janet fitch.

possibly bi polar...more like a selfish, self-centered, insane mother who put her own selfish needs before her daughter and in the process ruined her daughters life.
Reply:Very interesting read...it was also made into a movie if you wanted to go that route.....





Astrid Magnussen, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a mother who is as sharp as a new knife. An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her daughter that they are descendants of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes.
Reply:White Oleander doesn't have anything to do with bipolar. It's about an adolescent girl whose mother ends up killing an ex, and while the mother is in prison, she goes from foster home to foster home. It's a good book, but may not be appropriate for this class.



I once read a book called When Rabbit Howls, about a woman who supposedly had what I believe is now called dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple, or split, personality). Think Sybil x 10. This woman claims/is documented as having had 92 separate and distinct personalities before treatment and "integration"... interesting.
Reply:Publishers Weekly Review: Thirteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen, the sensitive and heart-wrenching narrator of this impressive debut, is burdened with an impossible mother in Ingrid, a beautiful, gifted poet whose scattered life is governed by an enormous ego. When Ingrid goes to prison for murdering her ex-lover, Astrid enters the Los Angeles foster care program and is placed with a series of brilliantly characterized families. Astrid's first home is with Starr, a born-again former druggie, whose boyfriend, middle-aged Ray, encourages Astrid to paint (Astrid's absent father is an artist) and soon becomes her first lover, but who disappears when Starr's jealousy becomes violent. Astrid finds herself next at the mercy of a new, tyrannical foster mom, Marvel Turlock, who grows wrathful at the girl's envy of a sympathetic next-door prostitute's luxurious life. "Never hope to find people who will understand you," Ingrid archly advises as her daughter's Dickensian descent continues in the household of sadistic Amelia Ramos, where Astrid is reduced to pilfering food from garbage cans. Then she's off to the dream home of childless yuppies Claire and Ron Richards, who shower her with gifts, art lessons and the warmth she's been craving. But this new development piques Ingrid's jealousy, and Astrid, now 17 and a high school senior, falls into the clutches of the entrepreneurial Rena Grushenka. Amid Rena's flea-market wares, Astrid learns to fabricate junk art and blossoms as a sculptor. Meanwhile, Ingrid, poet-in-prison, becomes a feminist icon who now has a chance at freedom--if Astrid will agree to testify untruthfully at the trial. Astrid's difficult choice yields unexpected truths about her hidden past, and propels her already epic story forward, with genuinely surprising and wrenching twists. Fitch is a splendid stylist; her prose is graceful and witty; the dialogue, especially Astrid's distinctive utterances and loopy adages, has a seductive pull. This sensitive exploration of the mother-daughter terrain (sure to be compared to Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here) offers a convincing look at what Adrienne Rich has called "this womanly splitting of self," in a poignant, virtuosic, utterly captivating narrative.
Reply:Astrid is twelve years old and living in California. She and her mother, poet Ingrid Magnussen, live a sheltered life together with little male influence. Ingrid was left by her husband, Klaus Anders, before Astrid was old enough to remember; she has never seen or spoken to her father. Astrid, like her mother, is beautiful. She relies solely on Ingrid and has trouble fitting in at school. Ingrid, however, is self-centered, superficial, cold-hearted and eccentric. She lives by the maxim "Never let a man stay the night" and does not show interest in Astrid as a person, sometimes seemingly forgetting she has a daughter. Because of this, Astrid fears abandonment above all else....

Fore more go to this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Olean...



Hope this helps :)
Reply:no, it doesn't have anything to do with being bipolar, but it's an extremely excellent excellent excellent book and i suggest you read it no matter what. it's the story of a girl going from foster home to foster home to foster home.

sorta about finding yourself.
Reply:White Oleander is a 1999 novel by American author Janet Fitch. It is a coming-of-age story about a child (Astrid) in foster care who is dealing with the separation from her mother.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Olean...