The Book Keep

Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2005
Pages: 288

Cover design by: Rodrigo Corral
(via goodreads)

Summary

From her earliest memory, Jeannette Walls’s childhood was anything but ordinary—as were her parents, her father brilliant and fearless yet controlled by alcohol, her mother free-spirited and artistic yet emotionally and mentally distant. The couple’s dysfunctions dictated a nomadic life in severe poverty for Jeannette, her two sisters, and her brother. But rather than succumb to a cycle of generational trauma, the siblings protected one another and, together, transformed a home once defined by hunger, instability, and hardship to ones of ambition and security.

Review

If there were one word to describe the spirit of Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, it would be honest. It is an inherent quality of the author’s voice and is complemented, if not amplified, by her journalistic writing style. That is, true to Walls’s authorial beginnings as a reporter, she tells her own story with descriptive, engaging clarity and a straightforwardness that does not betray judgment of or self-pity for the people and events in her life. Instead, the book illustrates her experiences like an unaltered imprint of memory, written as much for the reader to regard with quiet shock as for Walls to retrospect with calm acceptance.

After all, the author’s life seems to contain a startling amount of events both beautiful and horrific to process. Thematically, The Glass Castle sheds light on several serious issues, including poverty, bullying, sexual assault, and addiction, and how they are often closely tied in society. The first of these is perhaps presented most strikingly, offering poignant insight into the struggles that children who grow up in families where food, clothing, and other resources are scarce face at school and in the community. At the same time, Walls’s experiences prompt us to consider more nuanced realities we all might encounter in life, such as the battle between love and enabling unhealthy behaviors.

Each of these themes is built mindfully throughout The Glass Castle, especially in how the memoir is structured overall. Segmented into five parts, we begin by understanding why Walls was led to reflect on her life by the impetus of meeting her homeless mother. From there, the collections of memories that follow are like time capsules, and we perceive Walls’s life as we would our own: in pieces of specific times and places that, when studied in succession, carry the weight of a lifetime. Likewise, we are able to see how Walls’s perception of the world evolved as she grew up, most importantly recognizing that she was not forever bound to the life her parents had chosen.

Thus driven by the mounting evidence of her parents’ dysfunctions and the subsequent hope of a better future for Walls and her siblings, the memoir’s pace maintains momentum as well as any fictional plot, and though not quite a happy ending, what makes The Glass Castle unforgettable is the feeling with which it leaves us. In her vibrantly unique yet tumultuous life, Rex is a central force of wild inspiration and profound disappointment: for Jeannette in particular, her father’s pride for his children and fierce imagination left a powerful impression, but his irresponsibility and manipulation effected, then, an even greater betrayal. Yet, in her honest way of writing, Walls does not seem resentful; the reader’s own catharsis is facilitated through her voice—which is one that ultimately speaks of forgiveness.

A message to her father, The Glass Castle conveys to us that the past is as definite as words printed in ink: it cannot be changed, nor can it be erased. All that can be decided is one’s relationship to it. And so, however personally we can connect to Walls’s memoir, it may still impart the kind of wisdom that is only known by those who, in misfortuned soil, yet find space to cultivate something good.