The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

The Glass Castle

by

Jeanette Walls

This novel is the September book for the Columbia City Library Book Club that I used to attend before I moved from NE Indiana to SW Ohio.  I will miss being with the group when they discuss it later this month.  I chose to listen to this book on audio and I finished it up on the way to work yesterday afternoon.  It is a well written book that held my attention.  It is also very sad at times.  There are parts of the book that made me angry also.  It is autobiographical of Jeanette Wall's childhood growing up with an alcoholic and drunken father and what seemed to me like a schizophrenic mother in the 1960s and 1970s.  They live in Arizona,  California, West Virginia, and New York during the book.  The most upsetting time was while they lived in West Virginia.   In spite of the very poor elementary formal schooling they had their parents were able to school them on the road and the children were all very bright.  Their education in junior high and high school was more formal but marginal due to social ostracizing brought on by poor clothing and being cold and hungry at home.  What I kept searching for throughout the book was how the kids all turned out so successful.   What was the key that they were able to pull themselves out of the poverty, neglectful and abusive background and live as productive citizens?  I think the fact that Jeanette was badly burned as a three year old and spent a long time in the  hospital helped her lay a foundation of knowing what it was like to be warm, clean and well fed.  There was also a high school teacher in West Virginia who had tried to help her father when he was young and had made enough of an impression that Jeanette was named after her.  When the family moved back to her father's old home town the teacher was still there and encouraged Jeanette.  This teacher was in charge of the school newspaper and Jeanette spent a lot of time during her high school years working on the school paper under this teachers guidance.  Also all the Walls kids were big readers.  One book that Jeanette loved was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith.    I think this story inspired her and gave her direction.   This book is hard to take in during parts of it due to the extremely poor conditions the children had to live under.  But at other parts any one who grew up during the 1960s and 1970s could relate to.  Much of the toys and games were the same as the ones I was acquainted with.  And the anti-authority opinions of Mr and Mrs Walls were familiar lines.  Please click on the title and the authors names above for more information and enjoy the video that follows.