Man, being a woman is tough huh? Or even growing up to be one. Or even growing up to be one without the guidance of parents. Astrid Magnussen has all these going for her and the distinct disadvantage that her mother is a venomous woman who would try to destroy anybody getting close to her daughter. You see, for the most part of the book, Ingrid Magnussen is in prison. She is the White Oleander of the title — a poisonous native plant in California. Pretty to look at, but fuck me dead it’s gonna kill you.
The Fall of Ingrid Magnussen
Astrid knew from early on that her existence is a burden on her mother, who would rather be dancing flamenco with some Spanish dude named Juan, or being ravished by the beach by twenty guys. I guess your priorities change when you’re a parent. She barely knew her father, who left when she was too young to remember, and thus lives a semi-nomadic life with her distracted mother. Ingrid would invite men over to her place, Astrid would observe the sexual act from the other side of the screen, which perhaps plants the seed for her personality.
When Ingrid met Barry, an unattractive but desired by other women type of bloke who just kept stalking her, she left her guard down and managed to fall for him. Except nobody told her that she was just the flavour of the week, which incensed her and lead her to a crime which led to a prison sentence. But what’s going to happen to Astrid?
The Blooming of Astrid Magnussen
You can call it blossoming, but it could be something else entirely. Astrid was never destined for success and for the remainder of the book, we see her jump from one foster family to the next, each with their own different agenda, none who can give her a genuine love of a parent. Starr was a former stripper reformed devout Christian, who saw her adopted children as a second chance for salvation, but only to an extent; The bigoted Turlocks treated her as a housemaid; Amelia Ramos treated her as a source of income to the point that she was starving her adopted children to cut costs; and Claire… Well Claire was special.
Each of these experiences in the family contribute to Astrid’s development. She experienced her sexual awakening with Starr’s partner, Ray (eww) and after being forced into religion, knew that it wasn’t for her. In the Turlocks home she met Olivia, a high-class black prostitute she was enchanted with, and she started to learn of her own powers to get what she wants. The Ramos told her to survive by way of starvation, to do whatever it is to keep her stomach full. Claire told her empathy and what it was liked to be loved. Rena taught her how to take advantage of situations — the value of transactions is often understated.
The Tragedy of the White Oleander
The inability to connect is central to the story. White Oleander is about human beings trying to make do, trying to connect, to be wanted and still find themselves wanting to be wanted, and failing. It is about selfishness, spite, vitriol and impulsion — and naturally their consequences. It is a tragedy that Starr, a reformed Christian, is unable to truly adopt Astrid as her own child, and at the first sign of jealousy she was willing to return her back to child services. Claire’s plight is her loneliness and her lack of attention, which was why she needed Astrid. In her own way, Astrid needed Claire just as much. However, Claire is weak and swayed by her own anxieties and fear. Astrid couldn’t save her and ended up resenting her towards the end.
Ultimately, Astrid selected Rena instead of a proper foster family. She already knew what she was going to get — that Rena’s motives to acquire her is more for selfish than altruistic, that she doesn’t want to fall hard again as she did with Claire. This is the tragedy of Astrid’s choice — that she has options but only chose something that she thinks she deserves. But Rena was perhaps a better choice: Astrid learned the value of things from her, that nothing comes free and you have the ability to give or to trade.
All in all, nothing is truly lost for Astrid. She grows into womanhood, tarnished but somewhat intact. Not much can really shake off the trauma of being an orphaned child with a jealously murderous mother in jail who’d try to remove every threat to her maternal post. By the end, we find that Ingrid regrets her crime as she saw what her daughter had become — perhaps a version of herself, but smarter and more jaded. She wanted the version of the daughter that she knew back.
The tragedy that’s in the veins for every relationship we see here is the failure of the human connection. Regardless of best intentions to connect, the gap is just too far. Claire is the closest that Astrid will have to a mother, and that bitch actually told Astrid that she wished that she had a real daughter. Gah, my heart couldn’t take it. Everybody in some ways, fail to connect with the person they want to connect to the most. Starr and Ray, Astrid and Claire, Claire to Ingrid, Claire and Roy, the list is endless. And who’s to say that it’s easy? Something is amiss, nothing is perfect. Ray was able to be the “good man” for Starr, but he was unable to satisfy her sexually. Ron cared deeply for Claire, but he is not available, plus he had been cheating on her.
A strong book, with a weak finish
White Oleander will turn you upside-down, churn your stomach, kill your sleep. It’s the kind of book that you can’t bear but keep reading lest you wonder in your sleep of what happens next. But it is not a suspense novel: it is peak human drama seen through the eyes of an adolescent. Everybody is broken, but as we know, there’s something endlessly beautiful about flawed humans trying to make do.
The book may feel inconsistent at times. Astrid’s prose tends to change as she moves from one family to the next, and this may have been intentional. She is poetic with her mother, anxious with Claire, passionate with Starr and cold with Rena. But I personally don’t mind this inconsistency — it gives the book its colour. Astrid has to adapt with the family that she is given, and the language she uses follows suit.
The inconsistency bothered me at the end of the book, where for the final 100 pages after all the drama in the earlier parts, nothing much really happened. White Oleander started strong but ended with a whimper. However, the objective of is achieved by this time — Astrid is the owner of her own self — she becomes an artist in her own style and perhaps will follow the cycle of her mother. We know that Ingrid is the White Oleander of the novel, but has Astrid ultimately become one herself?
White Oleander in my mind falls short of being a great book. We were given four compelling families who adopted Astrid, but the final one really let the ball down. Her sojourn with Rena is the weakest part of the book, a lull where the story perhaps should have gone to overdrive. Maybe I’m asking for too much. The earlier parts of the book more than makes up for the last third. This doesn’t take away the fact that The White Oleander is as beautiful and intoxicating a book as the flower that grows stubborn like weeds in the Californian landscape.
