This book is one I actually read in one night (Tuesday, been too busy to blog this week). One really long night. Hooray for insomnia!
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about her very dysfunctional family. I have gathered that Jeannette is currently a correspondent for MSNBC.com, so the comfort throughout all of this insanity is that you know she gets out alright and is able to do well for herself, in spite of the bizarre circumstances of her upbringing.
Generally, I am not a fan of memoirs, but this kept me engrossed from beginning to end. I think it was so fascinating because I kept wondering "how can things get any worse than this?", while knowing all the time that there really was no great revelation in store where Jeannette's parents realized they were destroying their children's lives and finally, everyone would be able to live happily ever after in a nice desert home. Yeah, I know that I said it is a foregone conclusion that Jeannette ends up ok, but the first chapter of the book begins with Jeannette on her way to some fancy party in NYC, and looking out a cab window to see her mother rooting around in the trash. Basically, that says to me that her parents are not going to be improving their (or their children's) situation any time soon.
The beginning years of Jeannette's life were kind of a wonderful adventure for her. Her family moved from place to place, occasionally living outside in the desert, occasionally sneaking out of their current homes in the middle of the night to avoid the "Gestapo" or whatever other names her parents had for people they owed money to. They made plans to build a glass castle in the desert, but first their father needed to finish building the Prospector (a machine that would help him mine for gold) or whatever other money-making idea he had at the time. Her father taught Jeannette and her siblings (2 sisters, 1 brother) about the wonders of mathematics, physics, and reading at very young ages, and in spite of occasionally catching on fire, falling out of moving cars in the middle of nowhere, or taking multi-state trips in the back of a U-Haul, things were relatively happy for the family.
As the years wore on, her father's inability to hold a job and her mother's unwillingness to make use of her teaching degree (because she was going to be an artist) began to put the children into increasingly dangerous situations. Jeannette was sexually victimized at least 3 times in the book. When Jeannette tried to talk to her mother about it, she asked if Jeannette was ok, and said she knew she had raised her to be stronger than to be bothered by being groped by her uncle while he masturbated. Then she said "that poor man, he is so lonely". That kind of pissed me off. Her parents were also angry that the children objected when they discovered their grandmother molesting the brother, because that made it harder for them to keep living off of her (highly questionable) good will. Up until that point in the book, Jeanette's parents were weird, but at the very least, they were protective of their children. After that, all bets were off, and they lost every ounce of sympathy I had for them.
Her father descended into drinking, and repeatedly stole money from the family. Once, he even had Jeannette dress up real nice and took her down to the pool hall to flirt with some of the men he was trying to hustle. Then he sent her upstairs with one, who tried to have sex with her (she was in her mid-teens), and on the way home, her father compared her experience to being taught to swim by being thrown into the middle of a deep spring (his actual method, by the way).
From time to time, her mother would take up a teaching job, always with the help of her children to get all of the work and grading done. However, once she got sick enough of it (a school year or less), she would quit, declaring that she had spent all of her life doing things for other people, and it was time that she did something for herself for a change. Then she would spend a few years devoted to making her art career take off in whatever small, mining town they happened to be living in at the time.
Yeah, as I said, of course things turned out well for Jeannette (and most of her siblings, too), but through no help from their parents. They end up living in New York, the kids in apartments, going to school or with jobs, and their parents lived on the streets, refusing any help from their kids and declaring that they were finally living the life they wanted.
One of the many things in this book that disturbed me was that the whole time, her family didn't have to live like that. They had many ways that could have allowed them to live a life they way they wanted, but with such luxuries as non-maggoty food and houses that you didn't occasionally fall through the floor of.
My thoughts: I recommend this book. She managed to write it in a way that was honest and straightforward, and still packed an emotional punch for the reader. It didn't come off like a whiny "poor li'l ol' me" kind of story. She didn't vilify her parents to the level that I think they could have been because, in the end, she still loves them and wants to try to take care of them. As time progresses in the book, she goes from early childhood, where her life looks like an adventure, and her dad is really going to do everything he talks about to gradually recognizing the faults of her family and realizing that this isn't how they should live, to finally doing something to change it.
This was read for my book club, and it was the first book in a long time that I hadn't read previously and ended up liking.
3 comments:
Wow, good review. That's the thing about memoirs, you know, they're not all crafted in the usual way where most things turn out okay in the end--and reality is so much more painful than fiction. Sounds like a good book.
Yeah, it was kind of a story that if it hadn't been labeled as a memoir, I would have found it too unbelievable to read.
I also forgot to mention my favorite incident in the book. At school, the Walls children got their eyes tested, and it was discovered that Jeannette's older sister had very poor vision and required glasses. The parents objected, as is their habit, saying that glasses are just crutches and she needed to make her eyes stronger by using them more(??). When the school offered to pay for the glasses, they relented and on the trip home from getting her first pair of glasses, she spent the whole trip seeing everything she's missed all these years, like the individual leaves on the trees.
That just reminded me of my exact experience when my mom was driving me home with my first pair of glasses. I kept taking them off and putting them back on and saying "I can see all the leaves on the trees!" To this day, my mother feels guilty that my vision was that bad before someone noticed. Since are both in the book club I read this for, I had to share it, even though she hadn't gotten that far, yet.
For the record, I'm just glad that my parents were more than happy to get me the glasses I needed. I'd probably be dead by now due to falling in a giant hole (like the grand canyon) that I just didn't notice, otherwise.
Lol--I'm glad your parents got you glasses too :) I had a similar experience in third grade. My first pair of glasses had Smurfette on the frames and my best friend had the same exact pair with a similar prescription. Once, after a sleepover, we accidentally switched glasses and didn't realize it for a week. Har har!
J
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