The Glass Castle is a non-fiction memoir of Jeannette Walls’ childhood. It was written by Walls, and published by Scribner. The ISBN is 9780743247542.
There’s very little discussion between the difference of memoir and autobiography. Technically speaking, a memoir is a subclass of the autobiography genre. Recently, from about the 90’s, memoirs have become extremely popular, example: Angela’s Ashes, even to the extent of authors writing fake memoirs, example: Memoirs of a Geisha.
Autobiographies are sometimes written more objectively, but are always meant to be hard facts, where research needs to be done. Memoirs on the other hand, are much more reminiscent, and can solely be from memory, and since people are not objective about themselves, and tend to be idealized.
Like most memoirs their really isn’t a plot, and not much of an ending to spoil. Its just a chronological order of events until things trail off into a usual settled, or at least understandable, ending.
Memoirs are usually about the people, but sometimes center around a certain event.
Dad is Rex, from a mining town in West Virginia. Restless, he was the reason the family moved around so much. He was in the airforce and seemed to be rather smart. But after awhile, he would let himself get fired from his job so that they would have to move on. Or maybe he was just too much of a drunk.
Mom is Rose Mary. She is an artist and married Rex to get away from her controlling and wealthy mother. Religious and impractical. She didn’t want children and dealt with them by having to do as little as possible with them, but did have all the kids reading at a young age. Rex and Rose Mary taught the children themselves and when the kids did go to school were above average.
There are four kids from oldest to youngest, Lori, Jeannette, Brian and Maureen. They’re typical kids.
Lori liked to stay in and read, and in highschool was an artist.
Jeannette and Brian liked to explore around where they lived. Jeannette decided she wanted to be a journalist during high school.
Maureen was much younger than the others lived almost entirely away from the family, making friends and being at their houses whenever possible.
The memoir is mostly about Jeannette’s relationship with her father. She is easily seen as his favorite child. When she gets older he is able to manipulate this relationship into getting things from her.
From the first page the reader knows that Jeannette’s parents end up homeless. But because they want to be. Rose Mary owns a house in Pheonix, but except for about 6 months, they never live there. Rex and Rose Mary are simply the sort of people who cannot get into a settled and ordered life. They don’t want to.
They also don’t want to deal with their kids. When Rex is no longer working, he spends his days in the bars. Rose Mary spends all her time painting. Between the art supplies and the booze, everyone tends to go hungry.
When the kids do go to school, they’re usually in used clothes, and don’t always have lunches. While still out west they get along fine at school with peers and teachers.
But after Phoenix they go to West Virginia, where things go downhill. Rex refuses to even go to West Virginia until the last possible moment. He doesn’t want to go back home such a failure. He never gets a job in West Virginia, everywhere before this he usually work for a few months as an engineer in mining companies or in unions.
In West Virginia everyone in town hates them for being outsiders, and can make fun of them for being poorer. It’s very much an “us against the world” sort of feeling.
I tore through this in a few hours. It gets a little tedious, it feels like half the book is a repetition of what’s already happened. At times it’s also a little unbelievable, you think, why the hell are they doing the same thing again and again? Don’t they know it won’t work?
Generally the battered wife syndrome comes into play, but except for one instance given in the book, Rex isn’t violent, just an unbelievable jack-ass.
It’s a very typical story of living through adversity and making it out successful, (Jeannette graduates college from an Ivy League school).
The one good question this book brings out, is whether it’s easier or harder to live such a hard-life with love in the house or not. For as much as the kids despise their parents, they still love them. And they also dislike themselves for loving their parents, because they know that if their parents cared more about them, they could be a normal family.
