Long after everyone else has read it, returned it or traded it at the used bookstore, I finally read Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle.
(Last night – read it all in one sitting)
For those of you who don’t know, Walls is a gossip columnist/reporter who had an unusual – you might say, rather terrible childhood.
The book begins quite effectively, with the successful Walls seeing a homeless woman on a NYC street and finally recognizing her has her mother. The book is the story of how both of them got to be where they were – Walls, successful and seemingly whole, her mother, homeless.
I enjoyed the book – it was an interesting way to spend an evening – but it wasn’t fantastic, and I had problems with it.
Like Franzen’s Freedom (which I will be blogging about soon), there was an issue that struck me right off the bat and that shaped my reading experience in a negative way. With Freedom it was the presentation of the “autobiography” of a major character – a woman of average intelligence, not terribly intellectual – in a voice that was indistinguishable from Franzen’s own practically omniscient authorial voice. Imagine that.
In The Glass Castle, it was the near-perfect recollection of an (admittedly searing) event that happened to the 3-year old Walls, coherent dialogue and all.
I’ve read some of the discussions on Amazon about this, with some claiming, oh, you don’t know…some people have freakishly accurate recollections of things that happened to them when they were babies…and I don’t doubt that.
But Walls’ detailed recollection of her very early life struck me as incredible. I don’t doubt the veracity of her account of her terrible, heartbreaking childhood, but it prompted me to wonder, as I often have, of the challenges of writing what we call “memoirs.”
Anyway, despite that, I did appreciate The Glass Castle. It was fascinating, heartbreaking, enraging and inspiring. What mysterious irony defines human existence, as the children of the purportedly privileged wallow and the children – like Jeannette Walls and most of her siblings – of the tormented and cluelessly self-absorbed manage to rise above.
There was an emotional distance, though, that, while perfectly understandable – without the distance from what she describes, how could one stay sane? - I felt, along with flat writing, made the book, ultimately interesting, but less than memorable in a quotable, lasting way to me.
It’s on my Kindle. I was supposed to have read it for my book club, but never did. Since it’s on the e-reader, I suppose I should open it. :)
I was also late to the Glass Castle reading, and I read it after Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club. I was struck by some of the similarities–crazy childhoods with Texas and Catholic connections to both women’s lives. What it made me do is decide that part of my mission as a mother (in addition to assuring they are put to bed with the same number of eyes and digits with which they woke up) is to give them the most boring, lame-O childhood that they couldn’t possibly have any material for a best-selling memoir such as this.
I agree- trying to give my kids a boring childhood :)
With her next book, Half-Broke Horses, she side stepped the whole question by calling it a “true life novel”. It’s based on her grandmother’s life and her mother’s childhood. Perhaps she should have also called Glass Castle a true life novel.
I liked both books a lot.
See, here’s the problem I have with the whole memoir thing. You can’t write a memoir if you’re unwilling to portray (betray?) the people in your life with all warts, flaws, sins, etc. But the memoir is the in thing at the moment. Because truth is stranger than fiction and we are more shocked/horrified/emotional about true stories.
And I’m angry to find – once again (according to Meggan) – that “The Glass Castle” isn’t actually a memoir in the sense that, say, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” is. A true life novel is a lie, just like a “reality” show on TV. Call it a novel and it’s worth something. Write a biography and it’s worth something. But this in between thing…
It’s a cheap thrill. And a dirty trick.
I read the Glass Castle and did enjoy it, though found myself wondering about the early and very accurate childhood recollections – how did she remember so much detail and dialogue all those years later? I completely agree with what scotch meg said. And Mary Karr wasn’t successful with The Liars’ Club until she changed her approach from fiction to true life.