When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
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Amazing! I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It boosted my momesteem a tonne by reminding me that not enrolling your child in activities for every day of the week doesn't make you a crappy mom, allowing your three-year-old to boil hot dogs unsupervised does!
Jeannette Walls's writing style is smooth, straightforward and compelling. After being disappointed by Frank McCourt's memoir about his rotten childhood, I was a bit hesitant to read The Glass Castle. I couldn't imagine what misery she could have survived to fill 288 pages. Unlike Frank McCourt, Jeannette Walls does not come across as arrogant, in the can-you-beat-this-miserable-childhood way. She just tells her story and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. It's evident that she loves her parents. She works hard to portray the positive and negative aspects of their personalities.
The neglect Walls and her siblings suffer, chapter after chapter, is shocking. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. Within the first 50 pages, a three-year-old Walls suffers severe burns after accidentally catching fire to her clothes while trying to cook a hot dog, and is accidentally thrown from a car while her family's doing the 'skedaddle' - sneaking out of town in the middle of the night.
Her mother, a self-proclaimed 'excitement addict' is selfish, immature and lazy. On several occasions she has an opportunity to make life better for her children but refuses. The children have to beg her to get a job, and when she does, they end up doing all of her work for her.Her mother brushes off all sorts of horrific incidents with her 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger' mantra.
Her father is a violent and manipulative alcoholic who thinks nothing of physically and emotionally abusing his wife in front of his children. On one occasion he dangles his wife out of a window while on another he tries to run her over with the car while she's in the late stages of pregnancy - and the kids are in the car with him!
I respect Ms. Walls for her ability to leave her emotions out of the story, although some critics have cited it as a flaw. By leaving her emotions out of the story, Ms. Walls allows the reader to draw their own conclusion about what she thought of her parents at the end of the story. She and her siblings suffered a lot but they also came away with some important life lessons that have allowed them to build prosperous lives and to truly appreciate the most basic things in life.
5
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Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
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