The Glass Castle  by Jeannette Walls
Scribner, 2005
Category: Biography

This book is my worst nightmare.

Not the terrible things Jeannette and her siblings went through, though that’s bad enough.  My worst nightmare is becoming like her parents, those shiftless, selfish, hopeless dreamers whose manias exposed their children to hardships no one should have to face.  They have just enough good characteristics–imagination, independence–to keep them from being completely awful, but those characteristics are so often warped by their selfish natures that it was impossible for me to feel compassion for them, not for more than a page at a time.

The Glass Castle is the story of the author’s childhood, growing up rootless with a couple of iconoclastic parents and her brother and sisters.  Rex Walls was a genius and a drunk who believed his intelligence made him better than everyone around him; he never kept a job for long because he would argue with his bosses or claim that they were part of a vast conspiracy ruled by the Mob.  His passion was to strike it rich by mining gold with a unique invention created by himself, but never actually completed.  Rose Mary Walls was an artist, both a painter and a would-be writer, obsessed with hoarding things and money, always looking for a bargain.  Their children’s young lives in Arizona and California were wonderful and terrible by turns.  I actually admire some of what the parents taught their children about self-reliance and toughness, even as I’m horrified by how they neglected their kids in the name of thriftiness or independence.  The family moved around to avoid debt collectors, packing up in the middle of the night and leaving everything behind.  Jeannette carried a single geode with her for years because it was the only thing she could manage to keep.

Then the family moves to Welch, West Virginia, and the tale becomes truly grim.  Jeannette writes of scavenging in the school garbage cans for her classmates’ discarded lunches because they can’t afford food, of living in a house that was falling apart with a toilet that was just a hole in the ground, of abuse suffered at the hands of her father’s mother, a bitter woman who was likely responsible for some of her son’s eccentricities.  Showers taken haphazardly at the homes of relatives or friends, living on pinto beans for a week because it was cheap, inadequate clothing or heating…the list of physical deprivations goes on.  But what’s worse is the spiritual degradations these children suffered.  Their mom was likely manic-depressive and untreated, their father’s drinking got worse; the children couldn’t count on their parents to support them in any way.

Whatever good qualities Rex and Rose Mary Walls had were completely subsumed in their overwhelming self-centeredness.  They never thought of anything but their own needs.  The scene where Jeannette and her sister find their mother chowing down secretly on an enormous chocolate bar when the kids have been hungry for days sticks with me–the mother sobbing about how she’s a sugar addict and she can’t help herself, as if begging them to forgive her.  Or Jeannette going with her father to "make some money" hustling pool at a dive, which ends with Jeannette almost being gang-raped and her father dismissing her complaints because he "knew she could handle herself."

It’s amazing that three of the four kids made it out not only alive, but came out successful:  oldest sister Lori became an artist, Jeannette went on to be a reporter, and Brian, the only son, became a police officer (an ambition he first realized when he had to call the cops to break up his parents fighting).  Maureen, the youngest, fell apart for a while–I had to go and hug my own exquisite blonde-haired blue-eyed daughter at this point–but even she seems to be pulling her life back together.  And yet I’m angry at those who would point to this story as a success simply because the children didn’t follow in their parents’ grimy footsteps.  What parents do matters.  Just because the Walls siblings made it out alive doesn’t excuse their parents from being complete failures.

I honor Jeannette Walls for being able to love her parents despite their massive failings–for finding a way to make love not mean accepting the horrible things people do.  She was literally scarred for life because of them, and chose to make her life matter instead of using her experiences as an excuse to fail.  Hers is an amazing story, and she is incredibly brave to tell it to the world.