White Oleander by Janet Fitch

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There are few characters as powerful as Ingrid Magnussen, a striking blond, the kind we all want to be deep down, that floats through life moving wherever the wind, or a shy poet, leads her. She is at once connected to the World, but without any sentimental ties, she doesn’t believe in love. Until she meets “the goat man.” She breaks all of her rules, spends the night with him, and slowly succumbs to the kind of passion she abhors in other women. When the goat man tosses her aside, Ingrid can barely stand who she has become, so she decides to poison him with the White Oleander, by boiling it down and painting his door knob.

Janet Fitch creates an elaborate story built between Ingrid and her daughter Astrid who is sent to multiple foster homes after her mother is convicted of murder. Throughout White Oleander, Astrid struggles to separate herself from her mother, first by establishing a sexual relationship with her foster father, much to the dismay of her foster mother that decides to put an end to things by shooting Astrid. From there Astrid moves from one foster home to another, forming bonds with a high class prostitute, and her perfect fourth foster mother that commits suicide, brought on with a little help from Ingrid.

The relationship amazes me as both a daughter and a mother. Growing up in a house with more stepfathers than Astrid has foster fathers, I connected with her as she tried to cut ties with a mother that ignored her for most of her life. On the other hand, I clearly remember the first time I viewed my own daughter as a weight around my neck, the inability to lead my own life now that I had her to think about. The idea of fleeing, of having no responsibilities again.

The culminating meeting between mother and daughter occurs as Ingrid needs Astrid to testify in court to get her released. Astrid wants to know the truth about her father, how her mother abandoned her when she was just a baby, and more. I can clearly hear my own mother sounding these words:

Whatever fantasy you might have spun for yourself, an accident you were not. A mistake, maybe, but not an accident…….Imagine my life, for a moment. Imagine how unprepared I was to be the mother of a small child. The demand for the enactment of the archetype. The selfless eternal feminine. It couldn’t have been more foreign……I was used to having time to think, freedom. I felt like a hostage……

Do you ever regret what you’ve done?

You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?

White Oleander reminded me that no matter how far I want to be from my family, there will always be a pull.

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