10 United  States – "A tree grows in Brooklyn" – Betty Smith, April 2014 (Score 8.33)

We meet Francie, a girl of eleven, living in a slum in Brooklyn. There is much humour in the writing. For example, people who go out to enjoy themselves on a Friday night and stay out all night will go to early mass at six on the way home “to get it over with”. That way they can sleep all Saturday with a clear conscience.

 Francie is a member of the local library. She reads a book a day and two on Saturdays, those latter being recommended by the librarian. Like Brooklyn, unemployed men in Glasgow sang in the streets for coppers. My grannie lived on the top floor of a four storey tenement building. She didn’t have much (sixty years ago), but would wrap some coins in paper and give them to me to throw down to the men in the back court.

 They would always shout up their thanks. They were especially grateful to get some cooked meat in a plain loaf bread and butter sandwich. It was always butter because spread hadn’t been invented. These men were frequently short of a limb, lost in one or other of the World Wars, and had come back to a supposed “Land fit for Heroes”. Many had lost jobs, families and homes in the depression between the wars.

 I frequently smiled at the book, and occasionally laughed out loud. On page 410 Francie’s mother Katie and her sister Sissy (Francie’s aunt) were talking in the bedroom about how Sissy and Steve’s adopted baby looked so much like Steve. It turned out that Steve had mentioned to Sissy about the young Italian girl’s pregnancy, and Sissy got the idea of passing the baby off as her own new-born after ten still-births by home-delivery by midwife. Francie, doing her homework in the kitchen, heard her mother groping for a word, and shouted out “You mean ‘coincidental’ Mama”. There was a sudden silence in the bedroom, followed by whispers, and accompanied by my chortling.

 I enjoyed this book very much, and I can fully understand why it was such a massive success on publication, and why it has continued to be so popular.

 I scored it at 8.5 for its humanity, its depiction of the hard lives of the people of Brooklyn, and the way many rose above their poverty, living good lives and helping those even worse off. This is all described in a straightforward and unsentimental way.