From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Fitch follows her bestselling debut, White Oleander, by revisiting the insidious effects of a powerful, narcissistic mother on an only child. Michael Faraday is a Harvard dropout who paints in the L.A. art world of 1981; his suicide happens a few pages in, and sets the stage for a Fitch's masterful shifts in time and perspective. Josie Tyrell, an artist's model and denizen of the punk rock, had an intense relationship with Michael, but never managed to free him from his mother, renowned concert pianist Meredith Loewy, who moves in a bleak, loveless world of wealth and privilege. Yet their very different loves for Michael bring about a surprising alliance between the imperious Meredith and Josie, a white trash escapee whose inborn grace, style and sense of self sustain her—along with art, music and alcohol. The two find unexpected comfort in each other's shared loss, allowing Fitch to contrast the inner and outer resources of women whose lives couldn't be more different, and to flash back deeply into their histories. Fitch excels at painting a negative personality with sure-handed depth and fairness, and her prose penetrates the inner lives of the two with immediacy and bite. In Josie, she has created an indomitable young woman whose pluck and growing self-awareness beautifully offset Meredith's emptiness. Their relationship transforms a big cliché—the artist's suicide—into a page-turning psychodrama.
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Library Journal
"Beauty and its pretenders prowl around the edges of Fitch's long-awaited second novel. Just as she did so masterfully in White Oleander, Fitch portrays the world of a young woman who is searching for a way to live after being dealt an incredibly lousy hand. Opting for the antithesis of beauty, Josie Tyrell exists within the punk club scene of 1980s Los Angeles, and, unfortunately, she finds familiar terrain in that subculture's harshness and brutal sexuality. Not until she meets Michael Faraday, a child of affluence and privilege, does Josie know that there is such a thing as true beauty in the world. He teaches her about the beauty of the night sky; of music, art, and poetry. But his obsession becomes his undoing as he cannot find enough of this transcendent beauty to protect him from his demons. Giving in to the inescapable lure of his family's ghosts, he commits suicide. Michael was the sole source of light for Josie and his tortured, tortuous mother:
now both women engage in a dangerous struggle to survive in a world of darkness. As Josie unravels the story of Michael's despair, she becomes able to move from self-destruction to self-determination. Suspenseful, compelling, and superbly crafted, this work shows Fitch once again taking the art of writing to its highest level. Highly recommended for all contemporary fiction collections.
-- Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati and Hamilton Cty

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
White Oleander

From LA Weekly, April 30, 1999
"...White Oleander is crafted with an insight and grace that elevate it above mere "beach fiction." Fitch’s hypnotic voice offers an honest and oddly seductive vision of L.A.

From The Seattle Times, April 27, 1999:
Mature first novel takes little from its counterparts
by Greg Burkman, Special to The Seattle Times
© 1999 The Seattle Times Company

Though most readers approach debut novels with an emotional patina of sentimental affection, these books are often plagued with the same tiringly repetitive flaws. Some read as though they were produced by a committee at a writers' workshop. Others serve as examples of postmodern pyrotechnical cliches or reflections of pallid multicultural stereotypes that pander to revisionist versions of "history" for aesthetic validation. Worst are the combinations of all three.

Janet Fitch's first novel, however, is clear-headed and about its own business, owing few debts to current trends and fashions in fiction. The most intriguing character here is Ingrid Magnussen, a fiercely independent and ferociously amoral poet. When her daughter Astrid is 13, Ingrid murders her own ex-lover and goes to prison, leaving Astrid to her future in the grisly human lottery of the Los Angeles foster-care system.

Mother and daughter correspond by mail as Astrid comes of age and becomes an artist during the next nine years, ricocheting from household to household in a heartbreakingly rich procession of L.A.-style worst-case scenarios: living with Starr, a born-again former addict who almost kills Astrid with a bullet from a .38; then a stint with Marvel Turlock, a white-trash racist who lies to the foster care administrators in order to rid herself of Astrid because of the girl's infatuation with an upscale black prostitute; and a stay with Amelia Ramos, an Argentine sadist who starves her.

Astrid eventually ends up in the care of Rena, a Russian woman surviving on Sobraines and vodka, flea-market junk, shady profit ventures and mindless sex.

During these years, Astrid's mother has gradually become a feminist literary celebrity, sought after by institutions ranging from Harper's magazine to Amherst. When this hype results in an official reconsideration of Ingrid's case, the novel culminates in an extraordinary meeting between Ingrid and Astrid, which will help determine whether Ingrid will go free. All Astrid has to do is agree to lie about facts pertaining to the murder.

Told mostly in Astrid's voice with dignity but seductive grace, White Oleander resonates with commitment to no other master than the art of storytelling itself, a welcome relief from agendas in fiction.

The focus here is something mature that emerges when desires for survival and beauty have been exhausted, a terrible and crucial awareness that Fitch burnishes to near-perfection over the course of the book's sometimes-melodramatic narrative: faith, hope and charity in their pure sense are forever elusive and therefore useless to those truly in need of them.

What is left, Fitch reminds us, is the truth - real contemporary life, merciless yet grotesquely generous to its emotionally mutilated human surplus, pathetically starved for the barest gesture of love.

From The New York Times Book Review, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
"...[an] impressive first novel.... her startlingly apt language relates a story that is both intelligent and gripping."

From Publishers Weekly (starred review):
"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."

From Kirkus Reviews (starred review):
"A first-rate debut about a teenaged girrs arduous six-year journey of self-discovery.... Vigorous, polished prose, strong storytelling, satisfyingly complex characters, and thoughtfully nuanced perceptions: an impressive debut indeed."

"Janet Fitch writes with breathtaking beauty about the central theme of our age: the search for self. White Oleander is a remarkable debut novel."
-- Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"This is what you're after when you're browsing the shelves for something GOOD to read. White Oleander is a siren song of a novel, seducing the reader with its story, its language, and, perhaps most of all, with its utterly believable (and remarkably diverse!) characters. The narrator is particularly memorable--there were times she made me want to cheer and weep simultaneously. Finishing this book made me feel gratefully bereft, and I look forward to Janet Fitch's next work."
-- Elizabeth Berg, author of Durable Goods and Range of Motion