The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This heart wrenching memoir of Jeannette Walls was probably my favorite of all the books we experienced during this blogging journey. I actually listened to the cd version on my way to and from CT over break. The up side of this was that the narrator was excellent and the story unfolded in a truly captivating way; the down side, I couldn't skip to the last page to see how it all turned out in the end!

I'm not sure where to begin. There were times I found my self shouting at the dashboard, "Don't you dare give him any money...are you crazy!??" and then other times I needed to wipe a tear or two from my eye. I think what surprises me the most about Walls's work is her lack of sentimentality. She tells her story with much objectivity and honesty. She does not blame or excuse her parents, as one reviewer said, "The author's tell-it-like-it-was memoir is moving...she neither demonizes nor idealizes her parents..." I, however, found it easy to demonize them!

To be honest, at times her parents impressed me. In the beginning I thought, They're a bit odd, but not so bad,and they were raising bright, creative, unconventional thinkers, but as Rex spiralled downward and her mother went from flighty to unstable, their unconventional ways became a curse.

For me there were a couple of very poignant parts of the book. The first was the section where Jeannette talks about how much she loved the bookA Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and how much she was like Francine- both having alcoholic fathers and tough childhoods. I too loved this book as a young girl when I read it. I didn't have an alcoholic father, but we certainly had some rough spots and struggled as a family. I believe that it was my immersion in books, especially those like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, that gave me the incentive to do better and be more.

The second situation that gave me pause and made me think was the section where Jeanette's mother and older sister are gone for the summer and Jeannette is "in charge." She started the summer thinking she was going to be in control and then realized how hard it is to stand up to her father. This was the section in which I yelled at the CD player. And it broke my heart when Rex lets her go up to the apartment with the pool player.

Would students read this book? I think it definitely has an audience in the high school, especially for older students. I could almost see this as a good lit. circle book, paired with Angela's Ashes or even A Child Called It (which students love to read!) I wonder if any of the upper level ELA classes do a unit or circle on the memoir? Anyone know?

I am anxious to see what everyone thought!