Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge.

This would be a good choice for book clubs and Young Adult readers as well. The Boston Girl honors the strength of women and the power of their friendships and shows how profoundly the early twentieth century was shaped by women like Addie Baum. One of Diamant’s greatest strengths as a novelist is her ability to convey the dynamics and diversity of relationships among women, whether the backdrop is the great historical drama of The Red Tent or Day After Night, or the more intimate setting of Good Harbor. Still it is hard not to wish that the focus were broader, so that more could be brought into the story than Addie can, or chooses, to tell. As the reader eavesdrops on what is presented as an intimate private conversation, Addie becomes so real that it is hard to remember she is Diamant’s invention. It is her friendships with women that form the core of the book, however, from her early summers at a seaside boarding house (the real life Rockport Lodge, meticulously researched by Diamant) to the bittersweet reunion in old age with her friend Filomena, who has charted her own rocky course to a fulfilling life.ĭiamant’s narrative approach of having Addie tell her story to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter has advantages and disadvantages.

Several false starts with unsuitable men are survived with the abundance of clear-eyed common sense that keeps her from making the ruinous choices that swallowed girls like her alive in early twentieth-century America. Addie is a “pistol,” and with humor and candor she describes a life that is by turns funny and sad, as she remembers the conflicts that arose as she pursued her dream of living independently. Born in Boston, Addie has a different mindset than her Old-World immigrant parents, seeing education and the world of work as providing opportunities her parents cannot comprehend her wanting. In early twentieth-century Boston, teenaged Addie “finds her voice,” as she puts it, through the company of intelligent and caring friends and female role models. When Addie Baum’s granddaughter asks the octogenarian how she became the woman she is, her answer takes the form of thisp book. A new novel from Anita Diamant is an event, and The Boston Girl is worth the five-year wait.

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant