["A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "Tomorrow Will Be Better"], though quite different in intention and effect, have several obvious elements in common. They are both drawn from the same level of American society; they both deal with family life in Brooklyn. (Incidentally, in this very consistency of substance there is a admirable suggestion of integrity: here is a novelist sticking carefully to what she knows, to material she can responsibly handle, without faking or long-range rese...

[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn] has the charm of accurately remembered details, set down simply and with feeling…. As long as the book moves with the rhythm of life in Williamsburg and remains true to that setting it is a beautiful and moving piece of work.

[Like the heroine of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"], Miss Smith was born and raised in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, but even without knowing this fact we could guess that the story was autobiographical. Women authors, especially, always regard their own childhoods as if the process of growing up were an experience reserved for people who will one day have the sensibility to write a book about it, and Miss Smith even falls into the common error of forgetting that it takes time to learn th...

[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn] is a first novel of uncommon skill, an almost uncontrollable vitality and zest for life, the work of a fresh, original and highly gifted talent. It is a story about life in the Williamsburg tenement district as lived by the Nolan family, particularly by Francie Nolan, aged one to nineteen in the course of the book—my favorite heroine for 1943…. The terrible misery, squalor, and grinding poverty of their lives are here in their unsavory detail. Miss Smith spares nothi...