The Boston Girl, Anita Diamant
The Boston Girl, Anita Diamant
40 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Boston Girl

Bestseller

Author: Anita Diamant

Narrator: Linda Lavin

Unabridged: 7 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/09/2014


Synopsis

2016 Audie Award Finalist for Best Female Narrator

New York Times bestseller!

An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People)—from the acclaimed author of The Red Tent.

Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, 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. “Diamant brings to life a piece of feminism’s forgotten history” (Good Housekeeping) in this “inspirational…page-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth century” (Booklist).

About Anita Diamant

Anita Diamant is the bestselling author of the novels The Boston Girl, The Red Tent, Good Harbor, The Last Days of Dogtown, and Day After Night, and the collection of essays, Pitching My Tent. An award-winning journalist whose work appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine and Parenting, and many others, she is the author of six nonfiction guides to contemporary Jewish life. She lives in Massachusetts. Visit her website at AnitaDiamant.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on December 16, 2014

Anita Diamant’s new novel,“The Boston Girl,” comes to us as the transcript of a tape-recorded monologue delivered by an 85-year-old woman named Addie Baum. Addie is cheery, alert and full of needlepointed wisdom. If this allegedly spontaneous memoir is any indication, she’s also the most well-organi......more

Goodreads review by Candi on October 11, 2016

When Addie Baum’s granddaughter asks her how she came to be the woman she is today, Addie embarks on a trek down memory lane. It is now 1985 as she relates her life story to granddaughter Ava, but her story goes back many, many years. Addie, now at the wise age of eighty-five, was born to Jewish-Rus......more

Goodreads review by Jane on March 03, 2015

Where I got the book: purchased on Kindle. This was read for my IRL book club. ***SPOILER WARNING*** I have to say straight out that I’m the wrong reader for this book, always a risk when somebody else chooses the reading material. It pings a couple of my prejudices: First, I don’t like immigrant succ......more

Goodreads review by Robyn on November 03, 2014

Review of Advanced Reading Copy, Kindle edition. At one point, I looked up this title on Goodreads to see if it was a young adult or youth title. The narrative, complimented by uncomplicated writing style, was very straightforward and unembellished. This is not to say that the novel was ill-written.......more

Goodreads review by Dana on December 20, 2014

* Happy Sigh*, What a nice read that was. I haven't read a book that fast in ages. I am a fan of books that cover a protagonists entire lifetime, however I feel that they can be hard to do right. They either end up being too long and forcing you to skim, or too short and leave you feeling like there......more