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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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?  [/quote]

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.)[/quote]

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