Pultizer Prize-winning American columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a front page feature story on Melanie Cane the author of Poisoned Love. Click on the icon to read Jimmy Breslin's cover story:
White Oleander
White Oleander is a 1999 novel by American author Janet Fitch, which was adapted to screenplay White Oleander in 2002. Oprah selected White Oleander as one of her book club novels.
White Oleander begins when Astrid Magnesesen, a 12 year old girl, lives with her mother, poet Ingrid Magnuesen. They live a solitary life with little outside influence. Ingrid left her husband, Astrid’s father, before Astrid was old enough to remember him, and forbade him from contacting her. In White Oleander Astrid relies soley on her mother and has trouble fitting in at school. However, Ingrid, is self-centered, cold hearted and eccentric. She lives by her own set of rules and shows little interest in Astrid, sometimes seeming to forget she has a daughter as all. As a result, Astrid fears abandonment above all else. As I describe in Poisoned Love, all people with borderline personality disorder fear abandonment above all else and make desperate attempts to prevent real or perceived abandonment, like both the mother and the daughter in White Oleander.
In White Oleander, Ingrid started dating a man who eventually becomes unfaithful. Ingrid is shattered and enraged. They try to reconcile, but Ingrid becomes more and more humiliated and finally she breaks into his house and spreads a mixture of DMSO, an arthritis drug, and white oleander sap all over the surfaces of her ex-lover’s home. The DMSO allows the white oleander poison to be absorbed into his skin, ostensibly killing Barry. She is charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. She promises her daughter she will come back, but Astrid is sent to a series of foster homes. Although I did not kill or try to kill my ex-lover, I did go into his home, as I detail in my book, Poisoned Love, and secretly poison him like the mother in White Oleander.
Astrid is seduced by one foster parent and shot by another throughout White Oleander. A third commits suicide. Between foster homes, she stays at an institution, where she is beat up by tough girls but befriended by a sensitive boy named Paul.
Each setting in White Oleander provides Astrid with a new identity to try and a new opportunity to be hurt. Through it all, she visits her mother in prison, and it becomes clear that the woman who killed the man who tried to leave her with white oleander poison, would also do anything and destroy anyone to hold onto her daughter. Whenever Astrid seems happy or at home, Ingrid finds a way to poison her environment. Astrid, who has been hurt over and over, ultimately rejects all the kind and well meaning people in her life, to avoid being disappointed again.
At it’s core, white oleander is a metaphor for the inevitable separation in all mother-daughter relationships.
Interested in learning more about the connections between White Oleander and borderline personality disorder? Get your copy of Poisoned Love today!
