The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

It has been way, way, way too long since I’ve sat down and wrote a review. But then, it has been too long since I’ve finished a book or at least, it feels that way. This is a book club book and an awesome one at that. It deserves to have some remembrance given to it.

The Glass Castle is one of those books that make you realize how good you’ve had it all these years. How everyone you know has had it good and how horrible bad can be for others. And sometimes, the choices people make may not be the best for them but they have to live their own life. You can’t save some people from themselves.

Sorry, this has totally told you nothing about the book... it is an actual account of the author’s childhood, growing up with nomadic/bohemian parents and three other siblings who were one step away from living off the grid. They had grand dreams, the mother wanted to be a world famous artist and the father had get rich quick schemes finding gold in the desert. If only he could get his contraption working, if only he could stop drinking. If only. They were extremely smart individuals; they just had trouble holding a job even if it meant that the family didn’t eat that month. The kids would scrounge in garbage bins for their classmate’s scraps to keep from starving. Living in homes, infested with rodents and insects, which should have been condemned. It was like an Americanized version of Angela’s Ashes.

But it wasn’t all bad. There was an attractive sense of adventure, especially in the early chapters before they ended up stuck in Welch, an out of work mining town in the hills of West Virginia. Like the Christmas each of the kids were given their very own star as a gift. Jumping into the car and not knowing what the road had in store. The hours spent drawing up the plans for their dream home, the Glass Castle, which they never got around to building. The sense that imagination and ingenuity were the best gifts a person could possess. The feeling that family was the most important thing in the world and if you had your family, things really weren’t all that bad.

Anyway, I’ve tried to be vague so that I don’t ruin for you all the weird and wacky stuff that happens to this family over the years. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.