Jeanie's Book Club

This past weekend I reread Jeannette Walls's disturbingly brilliant memoir The Glass Castle with a mixture of horror and page-turning fascination. It's the literary equivalent of a proverbial trainwreck from which you can't turn away yet can't continue looking comfortably without feeling your guts twist in response to the wreckage.

Despite having an intact nuclear family, Walls had the mother of bad childhoods...literally and figuratively. And, in fact, it's Walls's (likely) mentally-ill mother, Rose Mary, who has understandably garnered the most flak (to use a mild term) from readers, even more than Jeannette's severely alcoholic, chronically unemployed father, Rex. It was the combination of both parents's personal issues, though, that resulted in this almost unbelievable (and indeed some readers question its veracity) tale of extreme poverty, hunger, rootlessness, bullying, and neglect.

Many of these horrific details from her formative years had faded from my memory after I read it for the first time approximately four or five years ago, but I remembered that it gripped me, forcing me to turn page after page with growing repulsion for these sick, neglectful parents who were too awash in their own considerable problems to properly care for four children. (If ever there was an argument that some people aren't fit to be parents, here's solid evidence.) 

As the children grew older, they realized they'd have to fend for themselves to survive, rummaging in garbage cans for food that wasn't available at home, working to earn money as young teens to support the family, which their parents often refused to do, and once they realized life as they knew it would never get better (there would be no "glass castle" that Jeannette's father had promised to build), they plotted their escape to a home of their own in New York City.

Once I finish reading a book, I usually scour the Internet to check other readers' reviews. I always wonder if anyone else shares my thoughts of the book or if I was too swayed by my emotional interpretation to see it objectively (that often seems to be the case). With this memoir, other readers overwhelmingly shared my disgust for both parents, but especially for the mom who, whether mentally ill, immature, unmaternal, or just completely self-absorbed, was more attentive to her artistic pursuits than to her children's needs.

Jeannette Walls and her mother, Rose Mary.

(Ilona Szwarc for The New York Times)

While Googling, I was also very surprised to find out from recent news articles that not only do the author and her mother have a close relationship today, but Jeannette has allowed her formerly-homeless-by-choice mother to live in a small house on her property to ensure her safety. (Her father died in 1994.) As an adult, she has become more of a parent to her mother than her mother was to her as a child. More than forgiving her mother for the horrible childhood she endured, she accepts her, according to a New York Times article, as she is. She also chooses to focus on the benefits of overcoming a miserable childhood, which taught her independence, self-sufficiency, the value of hard work, and an appreciation for all that she has now. 

I truly admire the grace that she's extended towards both parents (which, to me, is as equally compelling as her childhood horrors) and her courage in telling her story fairly, honestly, and without malice. In the end, I realize it doesn't really matter what readers think of her parents, particularly her mother. Her childhood was hers, and the choice to forgive is hers alone. Ultimately, she is the winner for it.