Author: Jeannette Walls
Published: 2006
Publisher: Scribner
Number of Pages: 288
My Rating: 5
Summary from GoodReads.com:
The Glass
Castle is a
remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a
family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober,
Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's
imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life
fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was
a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the
responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls
children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected
one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed
them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
The Glass
Castle
is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but
loyal family.
This was one of
those books that I had heard of throughout the years but didn’t know anyone who
had read it so I never realized what I was missing out on. One day, I saw it at
my local thrift store and felt the instant need to snatch it up and start
reading.
The Glass Castle is a memoir about the author’s childhood and growing up
essentially homeless for a big chunk of her life. Sometimes memoirs can read slow and are
very fact-based without much life in them. Not this one. Jeannette Walls’
writing style was fast-paced and attention grabbing from the first sentence.
Her story was very straightforward and not whiny at all, even though she went
through some things that we couldn’t even imagine. The way she tells her story,
with vivid details and specific memories, is refreshing and enlightening.
There are four
children in the Walls family: Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen. The story
begins with Jeannette’s, the narrator’s, first memory as a child- when she was three-years-old and
cooking hot dogs on the stove by herself. No supervision. Where were her
parents? you might ask. Good question. And that’s only the beginning.
Rex Walls was
an always-unemployed entrepreneur at best and a chronic alcoholic at worst.
Mary Walls was a painter who would rather let her children starve to the point
where they would find their meals in the garbage than get a job. It was really
hard to read this book and not feel extremely angry with her parents all of the
time. They were “free souls” I guess you could say, but were both enormously
selfish and immature. Not only did they fail to step up to the responsibility
of supervising and being there for their children, but they also turned a blind
eye to all kinds of physical and sexual abuse the children received from other family members and neighbors. Their mantra was simply “What doesn’t kill you will make you
stronger,” and that was how they excused these monstrosities their children had
to live through without actually having to do anything about them.
There were
times, however, that Walls’ parents stepped up and inspired something within
their children that would help them survive and thrive. Instead of treating
them like children, her parents often treated the kids like adults and taught
them about things such as physics, the stars, and great literary works. By
their neglect and mode of parenting, it gave the children the ways of survival
and curiosity they would need to prosper and save themselves in the end.
This was a powerful
and thought-provoking book, which showed how much one person can go through and
survive, coming out stronger and smarter because of it all. I came away from
this book inspired by the author’s determination and ingenuity, and extremely thankful
that I’ve never had to live in a car or scrounge through the trash for my next
meal.
To end with one
of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Things usually work out in the
end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you
haven't come to the end yet.”
-Busy Brunette
Labels: Nonfiction, Rating 5