The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant,
2015, 336 pages, paperback.
A review by Joanne Shawhan, Zonta Club of Albany
In this novel, Diamant describes 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. 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.
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.
