| Bibliofemme Reviews |
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 
(Published by Virago Press)
 |
The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls’ memoir. Jeannette and her three siblings had a childhood that was far from normal. Her father was an alcoholic dreamer and her mother was a schoolteacher-come-painter. Her parents’ ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation.
Jeannette’s father Rex was a charismatic and perhaps brilliant man who, when sober, taught his children physics, geology and how to embrace life. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn’t handle the responsibility of being a mother. She described herself as an excitement addict and couldn’t understand why anyone would spend time cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes when they could paint a picture that would last forever.
The Walls family spent ten years leading a somewhat nomadic existence. They roamed around central America, moving on from town to town when the money or food ran out. Rex described the exodus from these towns in the middle of the night as doing the ‘skeddadle’. The children, used to living this way, didn’t place a huge value on forging friendships as they very rarely would get to say goodbye to those friends they had managed to make. Instead they played together and supported each other. Eventually the family settled in a small mining town, called Welch, and their wandering life faded.
However, life in Welch would prove to be worse then the wandering life. Rex’s drinking grew worse, Rose Mary found it hard to even get out of bed in the morning and the children became subject to the merciless taunting of the locals. Everyone in Welch was poor but the Walls were definitely on the bottom rung of the ladder.
In this heartbreaking story, Jeannette describes hiding in the bathroom during lunch break at school so nobody would notice she didn’t have any lunch to eat. After the other kids had finished eating and gone out to play she would rummage through the bins and eat whatever they had thrown away.
Jeannette and her siblings were fending for themselves from a young age. They assumed the responsibility of running the house and, on the rare occasion that Rose Mary had a job, they would make sure she got to work on time and spent her salary as sparingly as possible.
The Glass Castle is an incredible book. Told with heartbreaking honesty, there are moments when you will laugh aloud. What is most amazing is Jeannette’s voice, which is so matter of fact yet also contains affection towards her parents. For decades Jeannette has hidden the truth about her past, graduating from Barnard and with a successful career as a journalist. She has now decided to tell her story. The result is a tale of triumph against all odds and a moving story of unconditional love. 
