The Glass Castle
I just finished reading _The Glass Castle_, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, which chronicles her harum-scarum childhood. She was dragged parcel to post by two iconoclastic parents, a scientist and an artist who had no use for authority, regular jobs, square meals, indoor plumbing, or supervising their children’s basic physical needs.
Although Jeannette lived in a West Virginia house where the stairs had rotted through and the ceiling let in the rain and the cupboard was perennially bare, at twelve years old she single-handedly fended off the child welfare officer who came to the front door looking to give the four Walls children a better life. Jeannette was determined that the family stay together.
Throughout the memoir, she speaks with love and fondness of her parents who were sitting on an estimated million dollars’ worth of Texas land that they refused to sell, preferring instead to allow their children to pillage the high school’s garbage cans to avoid starvation.
_The Glass Castle_ is a simply amazing memoir. Not only is the story engrossing, but also the tone is a triumph of compassion in the face of one of the most complete cases of parental neglect I’ve ever encountered. Walls makes it clear that she didn’t feel ill used because, whatever their faults, her parents loved her unconditionally.
I cheered aloud when I read about the adult Jeannette. I won’t deprive you of the pleasure by describing her successes; suffice to say I was alone in my kitchen, clapping and cheering into thin air, as I finished the book.
