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A review by diannastarr
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
What makes a home?
Is unconditional love truly all that you need?
The idea of rating a memoir has always felt a bit absurd. I have done so previously with Born Red (a stellar piece that I highly recommend) but in a lot of ways, I tend to steer clear. While some authors might twist pieces of their life and fit it into their fictional narratives, a memoir is a diary made digestible for the amusement of strangers. At times, it can feel like the overt commodification of someone's chipped away soul, an invasion of privacy acceptable - but only for the right price.
I found the online PDF for Glass Castle and tried desperately to finish while on the clock, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. It wasn't because I didn't have enough time or that I didn't want to read it: it was because it was uncomfortable, haunting, hit too close to home.
In a lot of ways, I could sit here and pick apart the dysfunctions of the Walls. I could sprawl out on my couch and dissect the parents behaviors and speculate on their trauma, summarize my impressions on whether or not Jeanette actually "broke the cycle" and type out my peace on how growing up in a nomadic lifestyle impacted each member of the family.
But I'm not sure if it is my place to do so.
In the end, Jeanette Walls is the only one who can answer any of these questions. She wrote down her life's story and passed it onto us, but I don't believe that it is our role as a reader to look at the pieces of her life and to point the finger - no different than how I'd hate to share a piece of my life with someone only for them to speculate on what undiagnosed mental illnesses that my own parents may or may not suffer from. Glass Castle does not have a menagerie of villains and antagonists and antiheros and lovable side characters. It is not a piece of fiction that is trying to teach its audience a lesson and its collection of characters are not vessels to depict it. This is a life put to paper, a chaotic childhood, a little girl in an adult body piecing together the destruction left in its wake and how she managed to navigate through it all.
Is unconditional love truly all that you need?
The idea of rating a memoir has always felt a bit absurd. I have done so previously with Born Red (a stellar piece that I highly recommend) but in a lot of ways, I tend to steer clear. While some authors might twist pieces of their life and fit it into their fictional narratives, a memoir is a diary made digestible for the amusement of strangers. At times, it can feel like the overt commodification of someone's chipped away soul, an invasion of privacy acceptable - but only for the right price.
I found the online PDF for Glass Castle and tried desperately to finish while on the clock, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. It wasn't because I didn't have enough time or that I didn't want to read it: it was because it was uncomfortable, haunting, hit too close to home.
In a lot of ways, I could sit here and pick apart the dysfunctions of the Walls. I could sprawl out on my couch and dissect the parents behaviors and speculate on their trauma, summarize my impressions on whether or not Jeanette actually "broke the cycle" and type out my peace on how growing up in a nomadic lifestyle impacted each member of the family.
But I'm not sure if it is my place to do so.
In the end, Jeanette Walls is the only one who can answer any of these questions. She wrote down her life's story and passed it onto us, but I don't believe that it is our role as a reader to look at the pieces of her life and to point the finger - no different than how I'd hate to share a piece of my life with someone only for them to speculate on what undiagnosed mental illnesses that my own parents may or may not suffer from. Glass Castle does not have a menagerie of villains and antagonists and antiheros and lovable side characters. It is not a piece of fiction that is trying to teach its audience a lesson and its collection of characters are not vessels to depict it. This is a life put to paper, a chaotic childhood, a little girl in an adult body piecing together the destruction left in its wake and how she managed to navigate through it all.