The Boston Girl

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Diamant, Anita, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Diamant, Anita
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	Due 04-24-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	Due 04-27-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Diamant, Anita	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine--a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today." She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naive girl she was and a wicked sense of humor. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman's complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Disappointing submitted by eapearce on March 30, 2015, 4:17pm I am a big fan of Diamant's past works, including The Red Tent and Day After Night. I was looking forward to The Boston Girl, but found myself almost immediately disappointed. For some reason, Diamant's writing struck me as choppy and incomplete, and her desire to tell an entire life story limits the amount of details she offers about any one event. This gives the entire book a rushed, distant feel that really detracted from the story for me. Some of the struggles, triumphs, and general experiences that Diamant describes (in the voice of Addie) were interesting and moving, but again, the rushed feel of the book doesn't permit readers to become fully immersed in any of these events.

In all, fans of Diamant's work may want to give this a shot, but I would recommend keeping expectations low. A few scenes of early twentieth century immigrant life have remained with me from the book, and it is a quick read, so fear of time investment shouldn't be a worry.