The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

April 18, 2010 in book review, Challenge, memoir by Kim | No comments

I’ve owned this book for ages.  I went to a charity literary lunch for my kid’s school at least three years ago where a room full of strangers (or at least almost everyone was a stranger to me) ate wonderful food and talked about books.  There is something unique about a group of strangers who gather only once to discuss books.  The conversation is very focused, we don’t know about each other’s lives or preferences, nor do we ever need to, it’s a one-shot, one-subject dialogue.  Of all the books discussed at the table, the one that stood out to me was Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle.  So  much so, that I immediately bought the book.  However, as is the case with so many books, it lingered on my shelves, surviving every clean out, but not making into my hands to open up and read.  It wasn’t until child abuse month for the Social Justice Reading Challenge that I finally picked it up (okay, child abuse was for March, and I read it in March, it’s just the review that’s a bit late.)

People who have read the book describe the opening scene:  Jeannette is in the back seat of a taxi in NYC going to a dinner party and she looks out the window to see her mother digging through a trash dumpster.  While the scene pulls the reader in from the beginning, after hearing about it multiple times and nothing else in the book, it all sounded too depressing and heavy to read.  It isn’t.

Jeannette had a horrible childhood, no doubt.  The book is appropriate for child abuse month because the parents are far more concerned with themselves, whether it be from drinking or narcissism or laziness, to provide the very basics for their children.   The children often go hungry (Jeannette describes hiding in the girl’s bathroom at school to steal the lunch bags thrown in the trash), do not have enough clothes, don’t bathe, and are frequently cold or living outside.  The father returns home drunk when he show up and the mother is incapable of leaving him or holding down a job.  Both parents justify their behavior as lifestyle choices, which I don’t have a problem with until they  have children and refuse to provide for their basic needs.  Once all of their children moved out of the house, the fact that Jeannette’s parents decided to live as squatters digging through dumpsters is fine, they are adults who have the right to choose their own lifestyle.

Yet, the picture isn’t black and white.  Jeannette describes a life with strong elements of adventure and love.  One of the most heartwarming scenes was the Christmas Jeannette’s father took each child outside to pick a star for their Christmas present.  It’s clear that for Jeannette every time she sees Venus (she traded up for a planet), it carries her father’s love for her.  Personally, if Jeannette’s parents couldn’t afford to give their kids presents because money was tight rather than because the father drank away their funds, the story would have meant more to me, but it isn’t my story to tell or my life to accept.  I’m impressed by Jeannette’s ability to overcome the physical and financial circumstances of her life and for finding ways to forgive and love her parents for themselves.

It is this aspect of acceptance that raises The Glass Castle beyond a hard-luck childhood memoir to a story of hope.

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