Jeanette Walls
The Glass Castle (2005)
Author: Jeanette Walls
Genre: Memoir (Growing-Through Narrative)
Book Summary:
She caught fire when she was three, lived in the Mojave desert when she was four, fell out of a speeding car at five, and lived in a flophouse in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco at six. Jeannette Walls certainly never had a dull childhood, often doing the "skedaddle" in the middle of the night to avoide the "henchmen, bloodsuckers, gestapo, oil men, and federal investigators" that are after her family. Enigmatic father Rex Walls can't keep a job, drinks his family's food money, and is often abusive, yet he also buys his wife a piano, comes home with bicycles for his children, and rescues wounded buzzards. He teaches his children to do their second grade math homework in binary numbers, loathes the ordinary joes that go off to work everyday in their corporate prisons, and takes his blueprints to the Glass Castle with him on every move. Mother Rose Mary is just as eccentric as her husband, considers herself an artist of all mediums, doesn't believe in modern medicine, glasses, or nutrition, and is a self-professed "excitement addict". It is a turbulent and often injurious childhood for Jeannette, but one that slows down when her family moves across the country to stay with her paternal grandparents in Welch, West Virginia. Here the family's poverty becomes very real as the children are exposed to winter for the first time. School proves to be a saviour for all of the children when they are not getting picked on, as they can scavenge for discarded lunches in the garbage and at least be warm. As the family starts to fall apart and Rex's alcoholism and Rose Mary's enabling become more clear and mental health issues begin to manifest, Jeannette finds refuge in working for the school paper. What begins as a way to prolong the school day quickly becomes a calling for Jeannette; after her older sister escapes Welch for New York City, Jeannette begins to realize that the school paper might be a path to something bigger. SPOILER: Jeannette ends up moving to New York City at the end of high school, getting an internship at a small paper, and graduating from Barnard. Brother Brian moves to the city as well, and eventually Maureen, the youngest, arrives as well. Each of the children grows up to be successful and reasonably well-adjusted adults, and Jeannette Walls is a journalist for MSNBC. Her parents are street people in New York City, and they see each other occasionally. In an ABC News interview on 3/15/05, Jeannette described The Glass Castle "as an homage" to her parents for raising "some fairly fearless kids."
Geographical Setting: Desert towns of the Southwest, Phoenix and West Virginia
Time Period: Around the 1960s - present time
Appeal Characteristics:
The characterization in this book is the biggest draw. You truly get to empathize with Jeannette, a scrappy, persistent child who forges her own way in the world and who never loses hope despite desperate circumstances. There is also a strong cast of secondary characters, some of whom you can't help but pity and despise in turns, some of whom you cross your fingers and root for. This book moves slowly but steadily through Jeannette's life. It focuses on certain points in time more than others, skipping over years and zooming in closely on specific conversations, but it never losing its measured pace. Even when the family is in its most dire situations, with roofs collapsing and the family has nothing to eat, there is always a sort of calm approach, as if, in retrospect, life for the Walls family was always in such a state of urgency that you can't place any more emphasis on the desperation of one moment than any other. The memoir is open-ended, to a point, as almost all memoirs are; Jeannette is still living her life at the end of the book, so her memoir can't really have an end. The places that the Walls' live change throughout the memoir, and after their cross-country move, the frame changes as well. While their lives were difficult in the SouthWest, there is always a warm, open feeling of possibility. Once the family moves to Welch, West Virginia, though, that changes. A dank feeling begins to emerge, and the descriptions of the place make it feel sour and cold. The small town feels predatory and dirty. There is always a sadness to the book, but it's a sadness tinged with a stubborn hopefulness. The storyline is basically straight forward. It begins in the present day, then jumps back to the 1960s, when Jeannette is six years old. From that point, it moves chronologically through her life. The emphasis of the storyline is wholly on the characters, with no real plot beyond seeing Jeannette and her siblings grow up. The writing style is thoughtful, but frank. Most of the outrageous and frustrating actions of the Walls parents are told without emotional commentary, leaving the reader to react on his or her own. Because the story spans around forty years, the events and conversations that have been included have obviously been chosen carefully, with each incidence adding to the overall feeling and conclusion of the story. That same caution shows in the writing, with the word choices obviously haven been chosen with great care, but there is never any flinching from describing the terrible conditions or horrifying events that the Walls children endure. There isn't a lot of detail given, and the events are not sensationalized; the end product is not lurid, but it is deeply emotional for the reader.
Read-alikes: Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres is a memoir of Julia's difficult childhoodin rural Indiana and the Dominican Republic. Julia is a white girl with abusive, obsessively religious parents and two black, adopted brothers, and the family is deeply affected by racially motivated cruelty. Readers who appreciated the tone of Glass Castle, the feeling of tragedy viewed from a distance, will find that in this book. Those who felt connected to the characters, children who endure terrible hardship at the hands of emotionally abusive parents, but who face it bravely, will also find that here. Storkbites: A Memoir by Marie Etienne is the story of Marie, who grew up as part of a rich family of nine children in Louisiana. Life is not easy, though, due to a family history of insanity which affects several of her siblings and especially her mother, a sometimes drunk with a viscious cruel streak, and upon reaching adulthood, Marie struggles to be a different kind of mother to her sons. Those who enjoyed the characters in The Glass Castle will find children struggling against horrific circumstances and parents, and eventually overcoming them and becoming good people and contributing members of society in Storkbites as well. Those who appreciated the understated writing style, with its unflinching yet unsensationalized descriptions of tragic events will appreciate that here. Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer is the autobiographical tale of a boy who grows up without a father and with a working class mother who expects the best of him. He spends a lot of his childhood and adolescence at a bar, Publicans, and the colorful cast of men he meets there serve as role models. This book is a much warmer, funnier book than Glass Castle, but there is a cast of secondary and tertiary characters that are as mysterious and compelling as those in Glass Castle. Just as with Walls' book, Tender Bar is thoughtfully written, with each conversation and event having been chosen and written carefully to set the mood of the book. Change me into Zeus's Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss is a memoir about Barbara's childhood, growing up poor in Alabama with seven siblings, an abusive, alcoholic father, and a mother who was weak, but who loved her children and placed herself in between them and their father on many occassions. Those who appreciated the tone of Glass Castle will also appreciate the sadness tinged by hope in this book. Those who appreciated the pacing in Glass Castle will also appreciate the slow, measured pace of this book as it leads you carefully through Barbara's childhood. The Summer of Ordinary Ways by Nicole Lea Helget is a memoir of Nicole's upbringing on a farm with her paretns and her five sisters. Her parents exhibit extraordinary cruelty and neglect, and Helget moves inadvisably through her adolescence, forced to grow up entirely too quickly. Those readers who enjoyed the straight forward, unflinching storytelling in The Glass Castle will also appreciate that in this memoir. Those we appreciated reading about the human behavior in Glass Castle, the cold and neglectful treatment of children and the way that those children grow into adults, perservering through the difficult times, will also appreciate that here. Readers interested in reading another "how on earth did they make it?" memoir by a now accomplished professional will appreciate Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, which details the author's childhood in a desolate East Texas oil town, complete with an artistic, alcoholic mother and volatile, alcoholic father. Although the writing style is not as compassionate as in Wall's book, the shocking events here are nevertheless depicted with a wry sort of humour. Similarly, those looking for a much, much darker version of Wall's story might enjoy Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors, a very dark look at his childhood with a mentally ill mother who offers him up for adoption to her therapist, and by extension, his "family", which includes a pedophile living in a shack in the back-yard; readers beware, those turned off by the red flags for The Glass Castle should NOT pick up Running With Scissors. Other suitable books by Burrough's include Magical Thinking: True Stories (2005) and Possible Side Effects (2006), both of which will leave you laughing, yet reeling at the outrageous childhood he survived. For another tale of a highly dysfunctional family memoir told in the same compassionate yet unapologetic tone as The Glass Castle, try Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart. Now a well-known journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, Gilmore is the youngest brother of Gary Gilmore, executed by a firing squad in Utah in 1977; the memoir details the violence prevalent in the brothers' childhood home, and the tragic cyclical nature of abuse, yet makes no apologies or excuses for Gary's behaviour, choosing instead to focus on how the events affected the living. For readers looking for a more light-hearted look at growing up, try David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day, a collection of vignettes detailing everything from Sedaris' childhood in North Carolina, where his mother forbid her children to use the colloquial "y'all", to his struggles trying to learn French in Paris at thirty-something. Although his family is nowhere near as dysfunctional as some of the others mentioned here, Sedaris' writing style and wicked sense of humour is sure to please. Another well-written, unsentimental memoir to try is Julia Scheeres' Jesus Land, which details the author's childhood with ultra-conservative Christian parents and two adopted African-American brothers in rural Indiana, made all the more shocking for the fact that such abuse and hostility could be perpetrated so recently and by such self-professed devout parents. In her memoir, Jeannette mentions working as an MSNBC celebrity reporter, and drawing on those experiences, wrote Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip (2000). Dish is a well-organized expose of the escalating public demand for celebrity gossip - an interesting career considering the humble childhood we come to know in The Glass Castle. Falling: The Story of One Marriage (2000) might interest those whose curiousity has been piqued concerning Walls' husband, author John Taylor. In his own memoir, Taylor addresses the demise of his 11 year marriage (prior to Jeannette), chronicling the grief and strain with painful honesty. The Tender bar (2005) by Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, J.R. Moehringer is another great story of childhood struggle amidst alcoholism and poverty, with an inspiring tone of success against all odds.
Red Flags: Depictions of animal cruelty, alcoholism, homelessness, theft, and sexuality, child molestations, gunslinging, occasional profanity
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