Jeannette Walls - The Glass Castle

I love a good memoir, especially when it involves dysfunctional families. On a recent Amazon.com shopping spree, I came across Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, her 2005 memoir about her dysfunctional family. I had not heard of this book before I found it on Amazon, but judging by the number of Epinions that have already been written about this book, it must have been pretty popular. Now, having read it, I can understand why this book appealed to the masses.

The story

Jeannette Walls, one of four children born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls, is literally on fire at the beginning of this book. She writes of being a three year old, trying to boil hot dogs by herself, while the family dog looks on. Apparently, this was something she had done many times without incident. This time, however, she wasn't so lucky. The frilly pink dress she was wearing caught on fire and Jeannette was badly burned. As horrifying as it is to imagine a three year old child being burned so seriously, it's even more horrifying to think that the whole thing could have been easily avoided had her parents been there.

But that's the underlying theme of this book. Jeannette Walls and her siblings Lori, Brian, and Maureen, had parents who, because of their nomadic, non-comformist lifestyles, severely neglected them and constantly put them in dangerous situations, all in the name of "adventure" or learning how to survive. Rex Walls was an incurable alcoholic. His wife, Rose Mary, was a self-proclaimed sugar addict, teacher, and artist. They were not good parents. As a consequence, Jeannette and her siblings were constantly moving from one crappy location to another, usually living in inadequate, filthy housing that exposed the children to vermin and the elements. This pattern continued as they moved to different places across the United States.

Because they grew up poor, the Walls' children had to learn survival skills and unusual tricks to make money. In one disturbing scene, Jeannette Walls describes her father taking her to a pool hall, where he basically offered her up as a consolation prize to his opponent, who was the loser in their game. I was horrified to read about this teenaged girl being obliged to go with a strange man to his apartment at her father's behest. Clearly, her father's opponent expected Jeannette to "put out". Jeannette also writes of being cold and hungry, having to raid the trash cans at school for food and wear her coat to bed. Her mother frames the whole experience as something noble and exciting when, at least to me, it sounds like it just plain sucked.

Even though Jeannette Walls clearly had a difficult childhood, she somehow injects a plucky spirit in her writing. The book is rife with sly humor and wit. Even as Jeannette describes watching her father toss the pet cat out of the car window, she makes the scene sound funny. Of course, I cringed when I read that passage and was a little horrified when the author's mother suggested the cat was lucky because he could now go live in the wild. In another scene, she describes how she was tired of having an overbite, but her family couldn't afford braces. So she came up with her own amusing and surprisingly effective (so she claims) solution.

Ultimately, this book is about kids who suffered through growing up in the ultimate dysfunctional family and mostly prospered. Indeed, she even managed to put herself through Barnard College. According to the liner notes, Jeannette Walls has worked as a gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, is happily married to another writer, and has homes in New York and Virginia. When I read that, it almost seemed to me that Jeannette Walls' time in the school of hard knocks had suited her well. But then I realized that too many children who grow up with so much instability end up as bad as or worse than their parents.

My thoughts

I enjoyed reading The Glass Castle. I found it a very engaging book. There's no doubt in my mind that Jeannette Walls is a talented storyteller. With that said, I think I'm in the camp who thinks that Walls indulged in a little hyperbole. Some of the stuff she writes in this book is a little too far fetched to be completely believable, but it does make for some entertaining reading.

Even if everything she wrote was completely true, I think she must have gotten some of her "memories" from other accounts. I have a hard time believing that even after she was severely burned as a three year old, she could remember the event so clearly. I have a few memories of being three, but they're very fuzzy. I doubt I could write entire scenes about things that happened to me as a toddler. Maybe Jeannette Walls has an amazing memory, but I tend to think it was "helped along" by someone else's memories and a dash of her own creative license.

One aspect of dysfunction that Jeannette Walls did handle very well was the way she demonstrated the complexities of a dysfunctional parent/child relationship. By Walls' account, Rex Walls was abusive, alcoholic, and extremely neglectful. And yet, she somehow makes him out to be charming and charismatic as well. He seems like a colorful character who just happened to drink a little too much, even as he manipulated his daughter into giving him money for booze and cigarettes. She makes her crazy mother out to be more of a free spirit than anything else. I got the feeling that as damaging as her parents were, she still loved them and could see good in them. Even as more objective people are shocked and horrified by their actions, she still sees them in the fond eyes of a child. Having grown up the daughter of an alcoholic myself, I could understand that characterization. I love my father dearly, even though at times he's made my life a living hell.

Overall...

I would recommend this book to people who enjoy memoirs and colorful writing. However, I would caution readers that for a memoir, it seems awfully far fetched at times.