Joy in the Morning (Perennial Classics)
by Betty Smith

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Book Reviews of Joy in the Morning (Perennial Classics)

Book Review: A Kinder, Gentler Novel
Summary: 4 Stars

Joy in the Morning is the story of Annie, who leaves Brooklyn just after her 18th birthday to marry Carl, a young law student at a Midwestern university. The first year of their marriage is the stuff of subtle drama as Annie and Carl work out their cultural and educational differences.

The work is strongly autobiographical. Like Annie, Betty Smith left school at the age of 14 to work in factories and retail. Like Annie, Betty Smith (then Wehmer) left Brooklyn for the Midwest at age 18. At Ann Arbor, Michigan, she married George Smith, a young law student. In the book Annie is a writer trying to find her voice, and finds it in playwriting. Betty Smith was also a playwright-she attended Yale Drama School and had over 70 plays under belt before she wrote her first novel.

With that much stage experience, it is no wonder that Betty Smith is a virtuoso of both pace and dialogue. The underlying structure of Joy in the Morning is every bit as well-crafted as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But it is every bit as different from the earlier work as a college town in the Midwest is from New York City. It is lighter, more sentimental, and less condensed. The grit of the Brooklyn streets is softened here. Though there are allusions to her stepfather's behavior in her bedroom being part of the reason Annie fled Brooklyn, Smith doesn't show the reader anything truly ugly as she did with Nolan's drinking and death in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Joy in the Morning is simply a kinder, gentler read, a sweet story about the first year of marriage in a new town.

Summary of Joy in the Morning (Perennial Classics)

In Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law to marry him. Little did they know how difficult their first year of marriage would be, in a faraway place with little money and few friends. But Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles and uncertainty of poverty and hardship can be overcome by the strength of a loving, loyal relationship. An unsentimental yet uplifting story, Joy in the Morning is a timeless and radiant novel of marriage and young love.

Classics Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Classics
• United States
• Literary