My $.02: Book Review - The Glass Castle

Memoirs are funny things. Being a purportedly true tale of one's life, there isn't room for interpretation unless you accept that the writer is embellishing the tale for the sake of the book, which (in my opinion anyway) defeats the purpose of a memoir. As such, I read them as a straightforward account of what happened to a person, with only minor consideration of symbolism and whatnot.

So, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. The oddest thing about this book for me was the parallels between Mary Karr's The Liars Club. We have the tale of a child growing up in a household with irresponsible, partially insane parents. There's a lot of drinking involved. There's sexual abuse. They even both featured artist mothers. Frankly, the similarities became a little distracting as I went on.

The tone of The Glass Castle was far more uplifting though. The first thing I notices was Walls' ability to put things in terms of a child. As someone who simply doesn't remember what it was to be a child, it was fascinating to read. She really expresses what it was to live this wild life of hers from the point of view of her age at the time. It actually made a lot of the frankly terrible things she faced seem a lot less, well, terrible. It kind of stands as a testament to children's resilience to adversity.

The other thing that made them seem less terrible were her parents. While completely irresponsible, at times to the point of being abusive, her parents particular brand of insanity worked well to both protect her from the hardships that they faced (for a time anyway) and impart some important lessons about life, although many of those frankly get lost in some of their more ridiculous attempts at lessons.

Both of her parents are what I affectionately refer to as "tree-hugging hippies" (with apologies to Eric Cartman, who I believe coined the phrase). Both frequently spout off about how they should life off of the land and commune with nature and whatnot. It's unclear how much of this they actually mean and how much serves as an excuse for their living out in the desert instead of in a house at times. The father genuinely seems to mean it at times, growing visibly upset by a news story of a woman killing a wild animal in her back yard. At the same time, they live in houses and enjoy whatever luxuries they can.

Eventually the author grows up, realizes just how irresponsible these people are, and joins with her sister in a plan to escape to New York, a plan which, unlike all of her parents plans, actually works. It's a little sad to see the parents lose their family one by one this way, but at least it's not a miserable ending.

It's strange, because I spent most of the book not knowing how to feel about the parents. At a glance, they should have undoubtedly have had their children taken away. At the same time, they managed to keep at least the author happy for a lot of her life at times when she really shouldn't have been, which is admirable. I went back and forth between being furious at these people for their lack of responsibility, not even being able to take care of themselves properly, and being impressed with their positive spirits and ingenuity at facing (or more appropriately avoiding) their families troubles.

Overall, it was an interesting book, and this is coming from someone who mostly dislikes reading memoirs. Walls has an impressive way of expressing her thoughts as a young person. By painting these events as she saw them, without the benefit of the analysis an adult automatically applies to such things, she manages to tell a heartbreaking story that somehow isn't.