Teaser and Review of "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls.

First things first. This book is a non-fiction. It is a personal account of the author's childhood and teenage years growing up with her parents.

*Warning* - Minor plot details to follow. Nothing like "snape kills dumbledore" to ruin the book.

It starts out fairly oddly. Walls tells us of a brief encounter with her mother in the streets of New York, where she currently lives as an adult author. Strangly enough though, her mother is a homeless woman. Walls doesn't approach her mother, and simply watches her on the street from the window of her taxicab. When she gets home after describing the sensation of seeing someone you love out there like that, she begins to recount her childhood.

This is where the book becomes quite shocking. Her mother and her father are what most people would call scum. They drift from town to town living off the land, tax handouts (whenever they can lie well enough to get one), and the charity of others. In fact, Walls' first memory is of cooking hot-dogs in one of the many apartment buildings she lived at. She was only three years old, yet she already knew how to boil hotdogs on the stove. However, this memory is only a memory because something extravagent happens, since she's wearing her tutu and she's standing on a chair, her dress lights on fire from the proximity to the stove. She remembers running around burning in her apartment, and badly enough that she is taken to hospital. When the doctors start asking questions, her father fights his way into her hospital room, grabs her, and sprints out of the hospital, never setting foot in that town or the apartment again.

Although such a scene seems fairly dramatic and played out, these sort of strange happenings seem to follow Walls as she travels across the country with her brother, sister and two parents. The two parents are essentially what make the tale complete. The father is magical to his three children when sober, he teaches them everything about life; albeit in a different fashion that we're used to seeing. It really is a tough love. However, when drunk, he becomes as reckless as a stray dog. The mother is a free spirit, refusing to be chained down by society or the rules that govern them. This makes staying with the family a logical choice because they are always on the run from bill collectors and people who don't accept their lifestyle.

In the end, I began to feel empathy not only for the children, but also the parents. Yet, the parents seemed to be the cause of all the suffering that the children endured. This led me to feel an almost anger towards society at not accepting the parents, or perhaps because it prevents them of living the lifestyle that they choose without unnecessary troubles. Since finishing, I've come to believe that the family would have done well had there been more opportunities for the mother and father to be sustainable whilest they traveled and drifted as they chose, but since there were none poverty was a setback that they always seemed to be battling.

All in all, this book has changed the way that I look at children and their parents, especially those in poor or squalid environments. I wish that I could have been at a time that I could have read this around grade 8 or 9, I feel that I would have been a much better person in high school, and a more understanding one at that...as I feel it has made me a better person today.

Now, when I hear of children stealing food at lunch, or stealing money from people such as teachers, I no longer think "fucking brats", but "unfortunate souls", and though this might sound pretty cheesy and extremely libertarianism of me in the acceptance of their actions, you haven't read the book yet so blah!

I'd recommend to anyone facing hardships in their life, or if you feel like becoming a bit less ignorant. Even if you start out reading the book with a pessimistic view of life and situations, I guarantee this will change your mind.

:D

To do:
-Make a review for "The Shadow Boxer; Steven Heighton"
-Read "The Kiterunner; Khaled Hosseini"
-Read "The Memory Keeper's Daughter; Kim Edwards"

Recommend a book to me! It may take a couple weeks but I'll probably put it in my pile and read it eventually!