Books That Made a Difference to Jennifer Weiner
The author of a new memoir, called
Hungry Heart, on the books she loved, including one she re-reads every summer.
Photo: Philip Friedman/Studio D
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
By Betty Smith
528 pages;
Harper Perennial Modern Classics
"Francie is very much the reader-as-heroine," Weiner says of the character at the center of Smith's classic 1943 novel about an Irish-American family in Brooklyn. "Toward the beginning, she's out on the fire escape of her apartment building and she's got her library books and her mints and her glass of water, and I remember how vividly those images described her life, and how Smith shows that reading was what saved her."
— As told to Sara Nelson
Published 07/20/2012
