Fab 5 Book Club: The Glass Castle

Tonight the Fab 5 had yet another intense, esoteric book discussion. I actually had to look up esoteric just now to make sure it meant what I wanted to say, which, once you read the definition is rather ironic. I’ll let you get your own dictionary if you need to.

Anyway. The Fab 5 tackled The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This memoir recounts Walls’s childhood as part of a family that was one part comedy, one part lunacy and one part tragedy. Walls and her three siblings lived a nomadic life with their parents. Mom was an artist, a trained teacher, and always looking for the new bright horizon just waiting to be discovered. Dad was an alcoholic charmer, a highly intelligent man who was more comfortable hustling pool than working steadily at an actual job. He had big dreams, or delusions, depending on your perspective.

The children learned to read early and well, they learned about living frugally and simply, and they moved frequently in search of the next adventure. They lived all over the desert southwest, a vast playground and habitat study for the children, and they eventually moved to the town in West Virginia where their father grew up.  Dad was always on the verge of a new, spectacular invention. One of his plans was to built the Glass Castle, a scientifically designed house made of glass and tailored especially for their family.

 The kids were also often neglected severely, especially as alcohol claimed more and more prominence in their father’s life. Early on there were periods of time where food ran short, memorably a time when young Jeannette was hungry enough to eat the only thing left in the fridge—a stick of margarine. One move saw the children locked into the back of a U-Haul truck for what might be a 14 hour drive, with no way to communicate with their parents. As they got older, they went through periods of time where everyone in the family fended for themselves for food—scavenging the remains of classmates discarded lunch bags, finding ways to get invited to dinner at other people’s houses.

We wondered how these young people remained hopeful, kept their goals in sight, and seemed to feel loved, for the most part. This is an interesting point, after a Bible study discussion I took part in today. We talked about Job, and how he felt right before God, even though everything pointed to God's dismissal of him. We each thought a bit about how and when we have felt "approved of"--and how so often it feels to a child that their parents don't really approve. In this book, the children seem to feel their parents' approval as far as that goes, which serves them well as they push at the boundaries of their isolated lives.

Walls is a great writer, and she manages to tell incredibly sad stories with beauty and wit. That almost goes without saying, since this dark family tale turned out to be one of our favorite reads in a long time. Somehow she makes readers a tiny bit jealous at certain points that we didn’t grow up with such footloose and adventurous parents, even when it was obviously not something to be envied!

Eventually, though, we proved our incapacity for such an unplanned and uncertain lifestyle. Host Nancy produced two miniature boxes of chocolates—one Whitman sampler, and one Russell Stover. Neither box had a little chart telling us the filling of each candy. Rather than throwing caution to the wind and each claiming two unknown pieces of chocolate, Nancy carefully cut each chocolate in half so we could see what kind we were getting. No one got an unexpected coconut or maple filling, and everyone was happy. I kind of don’t think we would make it with the Walls family.

Jeannette Walls has also written a book called Half Broke Horses, about her tough-as-nails grandmother. Nancy and Sonya have both read it and recommend it. I’m hoping to read it soon!