Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
Maybe it wasn't meant to come into my life until this moment. Maybe a lot of things I suppose, but after reading The Glass Castle, I am so very glad I was able to read this memoir that felt like a sort of real life fairy tale and nightmare all fixed into one big bowl of life.
This book no matter how beautiful though, this book is anything but a simple easy sort of story. Starting within Jeannette's childhood moments from when she was three years old and boiling hot dogs on the stove to staring up at the sky and claiming a star for her own, with the beauty came moments of rage from her drunken father who loved the family none the less and a mother who had the saying that art was worth more time than eating or getting food for the same family.
I breezed page by page of this life set before me in ink, no stopping until I reached the end.
By Jeannette's later childhood, set in Virginia where quite a bit of the book takes place near where the father grew up, along with her brother's and sisters this memoir turns into almost a survival story for a different sort of life not tangled in running from tax collectors and going hungry. Jeannette became determined to stay where she was. Determined to become successful, the kids banned together and forth even more memories and hope of a life they believed they deserved to live. I cheered them on through each step forward and back on their journey to New York City where the story continues on and on...
It is hard I think to review a memoir sometimes when you can or can't relate. It is not your life, but it is a moment to be glad you got a beautifully fractured glimpse into it.
I am glad to have gotten a glimpse into this story.
288 pages - Scribner - January 17, 2006
Recently a film came out based on the book. While I will admit to enjoying the memoir a whole lot better than the film, since I thought they took too romanticizing the life situations a little too much, the trailer is pretty great.
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