Glass Castles

[Anonymous]

When this forum's name was changed there were people who complained about lack of book discussion. Every time I try to start a book discussion it never really goes anyplace, but thought I'd give it a try, so here goes -

I've had Glass Castles by Jeannette Walls on my nightstand forever and finally started reading it this weekend. Essentially, she (and her three siblings) was raised by two badly damaged people - an alcoholic father and bipolar mother, with a lot of love and independence, but not much food, clothing, or reasonable shelter. The book retells her years from age 3 until she's a young adult. The book was published over ten years ago so not feeling like I am spoiling it.

I made it to about page 100 when i just thought, I cannot take this unrelenting horribleness of this family's life! So I skipped ahead and read the ending. I can't decide if I'll keep reading- I read some last night and found myself just skimming to get the basics but not intently reading.

This is a highly regarded memoir, won a ton of awards, high ratings on Amazon and GoodReads, and I just really dislike it.

I think actually, having read the ending, that I dislike that she was so concretely specific about things that happened to her when she was 3,4,5,6, etc, but very vague and broad brush about how she moved out of that life into what would be considered a successful life. And there is almost nothing about how her life now is shaped by her childhood (well, there is, but it's vague, and unspecific). Perhaps it leaves room for another memoir of her young adult years. Perhaps I dislike there is little reflection of What It All Means? Maybe it means nothing and just is what it is? She also refers to how much her brother helped her, but her siblings are very flat on the page. I think it feels very incomplete.

Anyone else read it? Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

OP, it's difficult to discuss this book because I read it about 5 years ago when it first came out.

Since it came out, there has been a veritable explosion of memoir writing. I think this opened the floodgates. And I have become much more selective in which ones I will read because they all try to copy her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When this forum's name was changed there were people who complained about lack of book discussion. Every time I try to start a book discussion it never really goes anyplace, but thought I'd give it a try, so here goes -

I've had Glass Castles by Jeannette Walls on my nightstand forever and finally started reading it this weekend. Essentially, she (and her three siblings) was raised by two badly damaged people - an alcoholic father and bipolar mother, with a lot of love and independence, but not much food, clothing, or reasonable shelter. The book retells her years from age 3 until she's a young adult. The book was published over ten years ago so not feeling like I am spoiling it.

I made it to about page 100 when i just thought, I cannot take this unrelenting horribleness of this family's life! So I skipped ahead and read the ending. I can't decide if I'll keep reading- I read some last night and found myself just skimming to get the basics but not intently reading.

This is a highly regarded memoir, won a ton of awards, high ratings on Amazon and GoodReads, and I just really dislike it.

I think actually, having read the ending, that I dislike that she was so concretely specific about things that happened to her when she was 3,4,5,6, etc, but very vague and broad brush about how she moved out of that life into what would be considered a successful life. And there is almost nothing about how her life now is shaped by her childhood (well, there is, but it's vague, and unspecific). Perhaps it leaves room for another memoir of her young adult years. Perhaps I dislike there is little reflection of What It All Means? Maybe it means nothing and just is what it is? She also refers to how much her brother helped her, but her siblings are very flat on the page. I think it feels very incomplete.

Anyone else read it? Thoughts?

It's Glass Castle (no "s") because it refers to a glass castle her father always said he would build for them....

The fact that she paints such a vivid picture of how (mostly) awful her childhood was is exactly the point: she overcame all of those things - poverty, parents who were more concerned with their own happiness than their kids' - and is still a successful and obviously very resilient woman. I mean, her first memory from age 3 is cooking her own hot dogs, getting third degree burns after her tutu catches on fire, and then spending time in the hospital, feeling as if she were just in heaven because it was so clean and the nurses gave her gum. And then her parents bust out of there without paying any bills, which is basically metaphorical for the entire cycle of their family life. The fact that she tells her stories through these vignettes in a very matter of fact, almost childlike (but also retrospective)style, in my opinion, is what packs a powerful punch. Her life was what it was, and despite her parents being awful (and they were, at times, just atrocious), they also loved the kids in their own way, especially her father, whom she recalls gifting her the stars in the sky one night as they lay below them in the desert. Walls also talks a lot in interviews about how she was, for a long time, quite ashamed of her background - that she and her family were homeless, that she had to eat out of trash cans at school, etc. She alludes to this shame in the prologue, where she reflects on the time she was in a taxi on Park Ave. and looked over to see a homeless woman, who turned out to be her mother, digging through the trash. Instead of calling out to her, she slouched down and went home. She felt shame both for who her mother was AND for the reaction she had in that moment.

I disagree that the connection between her childhood years and her adult self is "vague" and "unspecific"; I think the overarching message of Walls' book is that you can be dealt a pretty shit hand in life, but you can still overcome it - and that you are who you are not in spite of your past, but because of it.

(I'm an English teacher and we use this book in 11th grade - the kids usually love it.)

[Anonymous]

I agree with you OP. She skips a large amount of details of her later life. I think Glass Castles was a vastly over-rated book. Both the author's parents were clearly mentally ill but she foists most of the "blame" on her mother. She tries to make excuses for her father's alcoholism. She also makes the argument that her parents chose to be homeless. They didn't choose; they were mentally unstable and suffering from substance abuse.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I made an error in typing the name of the book - it is Glass Castle.

I thought it was moving near the end, when she is planning her move away from the family, that he father pulls out the old drawings he's managed to keep all those years and says they can start planning her room.

I also agree that the overarching message is you can overcome anything. It's clear that while he parents were, at best, unconventional, they were also smart and curious about the world around them. That foundation of reading and love of learning is what ultimately served her siblings and her well. She certainly learned resilience and making the best of a bad situation.

I read the bit when her father's mother is (possibly?) molesting her younger brother, and how she and her older sister stood up the grandmother to protect him. And later, she and her older sister reflect that perhaps their father is the way he is because of the treatment he received at the hands of his mother.

I can see why high schoolers love it, and the edition I have is full of blurbs from popular magazines - Entertainment Weekly, People, etc. I think it's written in a very straightforward way.

I compare it to Angela's Ashes, though, as an example - there's simply more reflection and what felt like a deeper understanding of human nature in Angela's Ashes.

I disagree that this book, published in 2005, led the explosion in memoir. I think that explosion was already well underway.

I"m surprised she hasn't (yet?) written more thoroughly on her life in NY. I've googled and found interviews that provide more info.

[Anonymous]

I read this as an adult and hated it from the minute she gets burned on the stove at age 3. I bet I would have liked it before I had children. I just kept worrying about the kids. I felt the same way about "Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight." I loved it before I had children and tried to re-read it years later and was so angry and sad at the terrible, negligent parenting that I couldn't do the book justice anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read this as an adult and hated it from the minute she gets burned on the stove at age 3. I bet I would have liked it before I had children. I just kept worrying about the kids. I felt the same way about "Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight." I loved it before I had children and tried to re-read it years later and was so angry and sad at the terrible, negligent parenting that I couldn't do the book justice anymore.

P.S. I think this is at least partially my fault as the reader.

[Anonymous]

PP here (the English teacher).

Walls did journalistic writing before she did Glass Castle, so that probably made her style less lyrical than, say, Frank McCourt or James McBride. But that is perhaps why the high school students like it - vivid descriptions, but it's not exactly a hard read.

I also found the concern for the kids to be slightly overpowering after having a son of my own!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's difficult to discuss this book because I read it about 5 years ago when it first came out.

Since it came out, there has been a veritable explosion of memoir writing. I think this opened the floodgates. And I have become much more selective in which ones I will read because they all try to copy her.

Same, except it came out well over five years ago. I liked it.

[Anonymous]

The title of the book is The Glass Castle

I loved this book, and I generally hate other people's sob stories, lifetime movies, and what I consider Optah books. (Think Jodi picoult)

I think I like that she overcame her difficulties for the most part and didn't try to make excuses for her family.

Equally sad books that are great: the remains of the day, and Revilutionary Road.

I can usually do a sad book better than s sad movie.

[Anonymous]

read it
loved it

I cannot get through a book if I hate the writer's style. I loved hers. She's gifted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The title of the book is The Glass Castle

I loved this book, and I generally hate other people's sob stories, lifetime movies, and what I consider Optah books. (Think Jodi picoult)

I think I like that she overcame her difficulties for the most part and didn't try to make excuses for her family.

Equally sad books that are great: the remains of the day, and Revilutionary Road.

I can usually do a sad book better than s sad movie.

I LOVED this book and I usually do not like memoirs at all. I loaned it to someone and I'm mad that I can't reread. I might have to buy it again which is something I rarely do for books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I made an error in typing the name of the book - it is Glass Castle.

I thought it was moving near the end, when she is planning her move away from the family, that he father pulls out the old drawings he's managed to keep all those years and says they can start planning her room.

I also agree that the overarching message is you can overcome anything. It's clear that while he parents were, at best, unconventional, they were also smart and curious about the world around them. That foundation of reading and love of learning is what ultimately served her siblings and her well. She certainly learned resilience and making the best of a bad situation.

I read the bit when her father's mother is (possibly?) molesting her younger brother, and how she and her older sister stood up the grandmother to protect him. And later, she and her older sister reflect that perhaps their father is the way he is because of the treatment he received at the hands of his mother.

I"m surprised she hasn't (yet?) written more thoroughly on her life in NY. I've googled and found interviews that provide more info.

Possibly he was molested, but he was seriously mentally ill, probably schizophrenia, manic depressive, or bipolar. Many people are molested in childhood without becoming paranoid or delusional. Many people with mental illness do become alcoholic though. Walls obviously is hung up on trying to excuse her father's reprehensible behavior and hang the state of the family on the mother. She did write a subsequent book about her mother's childhood. Maybe trying to balance the scales. The book isn't that well written. It's just a page turner b/c it's horrifying. It felt as though she was gilding the lily. Angela's Ashes is better written.

[Anonymous]

I was recommended this book by a friend and only read it because she wouldn't leave me alone until I did (!).

I was surprisingly surprised by this raw and honest memoir.

Having had a tough childhood myself, I could feel pain jump out from each page. I actually cried when I read how the Father stole money from her sister's piggy bank. I felt so much anger at the Father and sadness for the sister as she sobbed and sobbed.

What I took from this book is the author discussed her childhood, but didn't see herself as a victim due to how tough it was.

As adults, many of us will blame our parents for screwing us up. (I KNOW I do. A lot.)

She doesn't do this. Plus she clearly demonstrates that her childhood was not going to dictate her future. That no one can place blame on anyone but themselves if they grow up with a messed up head.

Sure getting to pick a star from the sky as a Christmas present may seem cruel to some. Also promising a little girl you will build her up a Glass Castle over and over seems just cruel to me too.

But she didn't let that childhood trauma ruin her adulthood, she refused to be victimized from what she endured and she became a successful adult.

So to me, the book came full circle. Just like a memoir should. Otherwise...what would be the point?

[Anonymous]

Loved the book, found it fascinating. I think of it a lot while parenting my overly protected and indulged children and wonder at the disservice I'm doing them by raising them in the opposite extreme. (I do a fair job of fighting this, but DH is the definition of helicopter parent, so it's hard.) I often think that our country's inequality problem will be partly improved as as advantaged children reveal their incompetence in adulthood and disadvantaged children reveal their resilience.

i was always amazed at her resourcefulness, even when so young, but the hardships seemed to have crushed her younger sister. I heard her on the Diane Rehm Show, and she was asked how her siblings have fared in adulthood. As I recall, her brother has been successful professionally but not personally. Her younger sister has been kind of lost to them. She came across as not warm. I wonder if that's how she really is and if so, how much is result of her childhood vs. just her natural personality. I have huge admiration for her.

I didn't know she wrote a book about her mother. I'd like to read that.