The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
Let me start by saying that I did not hate this book. Most of what I’m going to say about it is negative, but I keep a list of the books that I read and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 so I can look back and remember what I liked, and I settled on a 3 for this one. That would probably translate to “liked, but didn’t love”; or “liked well enough”. “Didn’t throw it away but probably wouldn’t save it in the event of a fire.”
The book is a memoir about the author’s experiences growing up under the “care” of her father, a shiftless alcoholic with the mind of an engineer, and her mother, an enormously self-involved artist. It was doubtlessly compelling, all the way through. I kept listening (it was an audiobook) through the whole thing, feeling depressed with the family’s disappointments. I’d say I rejoiced in their successes, but for two things: 1. they scarcely had any and 2. it was 99% their fault that they didn’t. The author paints her parents as brilliant eccentrics who couldn’t be constrained by their responsibilities, but the fact remains that (if she is writing the truth) they were two people who let their children starve, walk around dirty and shoeless, and live for eight years in a rickety house with no indoor plumbing, electricity, running water, refrigeration, or heat, and all because they couldn’t be bothered to have jobs or obey city laws or take pride in caring for the children they brought into the world. It was really difficult, as a sane and relatively productive member of society, to listen to those characters endorse their senseless philosophies and to witness them subjecting their children to them.
The book is not particularly well-written, either. So many of the experiences she describes are poignant and alarming, and yet they are often repetitive. Again and again, anecdotes reinforce that there wasn’t enough food, that their conditions were subpar, that her parents were neglectful but dazzlingly intelligent, that the family pulled together through the rough times, but that her father continually let her down, but that she loved him anyway and etc. etc. etc. and yet so much is missing. Memoir as a genre requires a certain degree of personal response to give it its reason for being. So many variations on “our life was really hard,” with nothing to the tune of “what it meant to me, what it did to me, what I took from it, what I want to tell you about it,” misses the entire point of the enterprise.
If I’m enduring through 10 audio discs (which translates to 288 pages, according to the ‘net), I’m looking for something a little more insightful than the chapter that closes out this book. After several years apart, the siblings and mother reunite for a family dinner, and someone wants to toast their dead father. Three hundred pages about this deeply flawed, charismatic man who left an indelible emotional mark on all of them, but especially Jeannette, and this is the toast we get? “Life with him was never boring!” In the words of Seth (and formerly Amy) on SNL’s Weekend Update: “Really?” That’s all we get? Really?
I’ve been Googling a little bit, as well as checking some book forums I frequent to see how people feel about this book, and even though some other people have had the same reaction as me (see, for example, Amazon’s 1-star reviews of the book) the vast majority of people found it touching and moving and a triumph of the human spirit and other various cliches. They’re also listing all the other memoirs they’ve enjoyed, which seem to be mostly of the “I survived a hardship” variety. Maybe this is just an interest I don’t share, but I don’t really want to read about people’s struggles with abusive childhoods or addiction or prostitution or bad haircuts unless I get something out of it besides a sensationalistic thrill. I especially want to avoid memoirs which are written by people who are overly eager to share their experiences with abuse and addiction and prostitution, and I can’t help but put Walls in that camp.
One interesting thread in The Glass Castle (which went nowhere, of course) is late in the book when Walls is ‘making it’ as a journalist with a column about the comings-and-goings of VIPs. She describes a lunch with one of these people wherein she carefully dodges questions about her upbringing and her parents. She remarks elsewhere about how she kept her family and her past secret from friends, colleagues, everybody. I would be interested to know at what point she decided she wanted to disclose everything. That’s a pretty significant emotional shift; was it brought on by a particular event? Over time, did she become more numb to the pain? Or perhaps less numb? It began to haunt her and she wrote the book for cathartic effect?
Maybe this is unfair, but my guess is that the moment of change occurred just as a publisher told her, “Write it, and I’ll get you seven figures.”
Comments
Posted by: betsy morrow
Posted on: October 5, 2009 06:07 AM
Wow - you strike me as incredibly cynical.
Posted by: Emily
Posted on: December 5, 2009 02:23 PM
I think you are missing the point of the book. She needed to tell her story because most people would try to forget the awful situations that happened. Her situation was not that uncommon. Children are often treated in the same manner as she during their childhoods; children are homeless, go hungry, are sexually abused and mistreated-both emotionally and physically, are transferred from schools, don't go to school, etc. We can't keep over-looking these situations because they happen more often that the average person likes to admit. The average American is obsessing about the safest crib and car seat, while children like Jeanette don't even have car seats or cribs or food. These situations are common! I volunteered at the elementary school for homeless children in Tempe and I can tell you that these situations happen all the time. Wake up and stop being so negative about Jeanette Walls. She is only trying to make a difference by sharing her story.
Posted by: Erin
Posted on: December 5, 2009 08:37 PM
I think you are missing the point of my post. I didn't say that I don't believe child abuse happens. I didn't even say that I didn't believe it happened to Jeannette Walls, although I'm not totally sold on her versions of events. My quarrel is how badly the book was written.
I don't read to get cheap thrills over other people's tragedies and I don't read to weep over the hardships of children. I'm not saying that you do, either, but that a lot of memoirs today seem written to appeal to those kinds of audiences, and this felt like one of those to me. If you got something deeper out of it, I'm glad. It just did not give me what I was looking for.
Posted by: carmen
Posted on: December 27, 2009 03:09 PM
Maybe you should stick to fiction then.
Posted by: Anna
Posted on: January 13, 2010 01:34 AM
Dear Erin,
I believe you‘ve completely missed the whole story and the purpose behind it. Also, your comments on the book do have some contradictions. Wall’s writing did not seem to appeal to tragedy addicts. It did not have overly romanticized sad bluh-bluh-bluh that many “seven figure” seeking writers use to mesmerize their wimpy audience. However, this is precisely the kind of writing you were searching for in the book when you mentioned your desire to know “what it meant to me [the writer], what it did to me, what I took from it, what I want to tell you about it.” No. Walls writes simply what had happened, straight to the point with no exaggerated wining, no touchy feelings, no fell-sorry-for-me kind of moments. She leaves it up to a reader to figure out what it meant to her, what it did to her, what she took from it… The brilliance of this book is in its simplicity.
Why she had to tell the story? When something horrific happens to you in life the only way to get over it is to tell the story, and you can only tell the story when you are over it and it is behind you. Only then you can make your peace with it. Many of us simply hide it as deep as we can.
Judging by your comments on this book you have not have a single occurrence in your life that you could truly call a hardship. Which is wonderful, I must say, but it gives you no reason to be making comments about something you cannot fully comprehend.
Or maybe you did and it was just as bad as Jeannette’s. But in that case your shallow review of the book could only be explained by the jealousy of the attention and of the “seven figures.”
Posted by: Shell
Posted on: January 13, 2010 05:38 PM
I've just finished The Glass Castle, and I agree with you. The ending was weak. There were moments of tenderness, but the book lacked depth. not a bad book, not a favorite. -- but i wanted to suggest a book. i'd like to hear your opinion of it. The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang, a memoir as well. If you do take the time to read the book, plese let me know what you think. I'm curious to see how you would take this book.
Posted by: Erin
Posted on: January 13, 2010 10:48 PM
I thought The Glass Castle was lacking in insight, not whining, but I'm not going to write any more because I've had plenty of shots and none of you care anyway.
I'm sorry people are taking my opinion of this book so personally. I'm sorry if I offended you, Anna, so much that you felt you were justified in suggesting to me that I have never experienced a hardship. You don't know me; you know my opinion of one piece of nonfiction. Let's discuss that and nothing else, please.
P.S. Shell--THANK YOU. I may check out the one you recommended, though I may have also sworn off memoirs completely. I expect you understand.
Posted by: Timothy
Posted on: January 21, 2010 01:07 AM
I find it hilarious that you posted this review with the hopes that people who disagree wouldn't argue with you. I find it hilarious that you thank Shell for agreeing with you. I find it hilarious that you did not even read the book. You merely listened to it.
As to literary criticism, I agree that it was not well-written. But it had many poignant moments that almost redeem Jeannette Walls as a writer. As a person? I cannot say. The book did not give enough insight as to who she really is.
Posted by: Melanie
Posted on: January 23, 2010 04:04 PM
Coming from a dysfunctional family and being consumed with a whole spectrum of emotions while I was reading the memoir, it now makes me sick to my stomach to read your review. The account of my upbringing would not be near as compelling and dismal as Jeanettes, but I have been encouraged by many to tell my tell. You either came from the same type background and are still running from it or you must have been born without a "sensitivety chip".
Posted by: Erin
Posted on: January 24, 2010 10:11 AM
Because people are unable to discuss a book without making it personal, comments on this entry are being closed.