Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Hardback: 288 pages
ISBN: 9780743247535
Dad came home in the middle of the night a few months later and roused all of us from bed.
“Time to pull up stakes and leave this shit-hole behind,” he hollered.
We had fifteen minutes to gather whatever we needed and pile into the car.
…An hour passed before we finally tied Mom’s paintings on the top of the car, shoved whatever would fit into the trunk, and piled the overflow on the backseat and the car floor. Dad steered the Blue Goose through the dark, driving slowly so as not to alert anyone in the trailer park that we were, as Dad like to put it, doing the skedaddle. He was grumbling that he couldn’t understand why the hell it took so long to grab what we needed and haul our asses into the car.
“Dad!” I said. “I forgot Tinkerbell!”
“Tinkerbell can make it on her own,” Dad said. “She’s like my brave little girl. You are brave and ready for adventure, right?”
“I guess,” I said. I hoped whoever found Tinkerbell would love her despite her melted face. For comfort, I tried to cradle Quixote, our gray and white cat who was missing an ear, but he growled and scratched at my face. “Quiet, Quixote!” I said.
“Cats don’t like to travel,” Mom explained.
Anyone who didn’t like to travel wasn’t invited on our adventure, Dad said. He stopped the car, grabbed Quixote by the scruff of the neck and tossed him out the window. Quixote landed with a screeching meow and a thud, Dad accelerated up the road, and I burst into tears.
“Don’t be so sentimental,” Mom said. She told me we could always get another cat, and now Quixote was going to be a wild cat, which was much more fun than being a house cat. Brian, afraid Dad might toss Juju out the window as well, held the dog tight.
-The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, pages 17-18
This incident haunted my mind throughout the whole book. I couldn’t help think, “If they could just toss the cat out without a thought, telling me we could just get another, who’s to say they wouldn’t do that to me, as well?” Later in the book when Jeannette takes a tumble out of the moving car, the same thought occurred to her as she watches the family disappear down the road. “What if they decide I’m too much trouble to come back for?” It had to be a terribly difficult uncertainty to grow up with.
Not only is there the impermanence of home and things, there are virtually no rules nor supervision, as the Rex, Jeannette’s father, spends much of his time “researching” at the local tavern and her mom, a narcissistic enabler with some sort of mood disorder fritters her time and money away escaping reality in books and painting. Too many times to count, the kids are forced to go hungry… or worse, dig through garbage to find food… while Dad drinks and smokes the money away and Mom sneaks nibbles of Hershey bars hidden under her covers.
On the rare occasion the mother works, it’s the kids who have to force her out of bed and onto school where she’s a teacher, then clean her classroom after school, grade her papers and make out her lesson plans in the evenings. After spending 8 weeks away from Rex and the kids, living in a dorm, eating regularly and taking classes to keep her teaching licence up to date, she comes home to report she’s had an epiphany. She tells her teenage daughter who has been handling the bills, working and feeding her siblings, that she’s spent her whole life taking care of everyone else and now she’s gonna live life for herself… say WHAT?!
yeah….. m’kay.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a shocking and heartbreaking memoir of growing up with an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother. Over and over, I was stunned and even angered by the so-called adults complete and total lack of parenting skills. At one point, Jeannette, who was 7 or 8 at the time, wakes up to find a strange man touching her beneath her covers, and when she tells her parents maybe they should shut and locked the doors at night so as to keep the creeps out, they tell her some crap about fresh air and not letting fear get the better of you. In her teens, when Jeannette tells her mom that her uncle has been inappropriate with her, her mother tells her he’s just lonely and that “sexual assault is a crime of perception.” Time and again, these two genetic donors (calling them parents is going too far, to be honest), show a complete lack of common sense and sheer laziness to step up to the plate. I am amazed that the kids lived to adulthood, let alone to be anything close as successful as they nationally syndicated columnist and regular contributor to MSNBC. Brian and Lori also made good despite their upbringing.
One thing I can say about reading this book is that I can say with 100% certainty that I’m not that bad as a parent. It’s done a lot to make me feel better as a parent… at least I shut the doors at night and feed my kids and make sure they bathe regularly. I make sure they’re fed before I feed myself and I’d damn sure have food in the fridge AND pantry before gnawing on a Hershey bar. I feel guilty if I decide not to share my candy bar.. or Lindt truffle balls, nom nom nom… but that’s because they’ve ate plenty and had dessert, and By GOD, this is ONE thing I kept for myself. And I feel guilty for THAT! I can’t imagine the utter self-centeredness, truly clinical narcissism, the mother wallowed in. Also, I can say with certainty to my kids that they’ve never gone hungry. They may not like what’s in the cabinets, but there IS food… it’s just not ready-made junk for them to snack on.
I read a few reviews of The Glass Castle, and one reader dinged the book because the author conveys such neglect and abuse in a very unemotional manner. How could anyone suffer such a life without feeling a sense of indignity and injustice? To this I must point out that Walls is a professional journalist, and relaying information in an objective, matter-of-fact way is part of the job, so I wasn’t surprised by that at all. Also, I think it’s a normal part of the coping skills of an abuse survivor to learn to be able to talk about it with some distance and disconnection.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a great story of resilience and survival. I don’t recommend it to be read in one sitting, as it can get emotionally overwhelming, but definitely a worthwhile read. If I could ask Walls one question, I’d want to know how she thinks her life might have turned out without public libraries and books to turn to. At times, it seems the only escape the kids had and a part of her best memories. I give The Glass Castle 4 out of 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment