The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

From Goodreads:

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.

I have to start by saying that I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads. It's kind of like Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson in that I can't really say that I LIKED it just because of the subject matter. But it's one that I plan on recommending up and down. It's an amazing tale of courage and ingenuity and so much else.

But at the same time, this book was absolutely horrifying. Like...I don't even have words for how disgusted I am with Jeannette Walls' parents. And how much I want to write a strongly worded letter to Child Protective Services for not stepping in at some point. There were times when I wanted to throw this book at the wall because I was so angry that parents could put their children in these situations. The author herself was touched inappropriately or almost raped several times throughout the book. Her brother was molested by their nasty grandmother. Who knows what happened to the other two sisters. Their parents always shrugged it off and told them to deal with it. The blurb above references the following passage on page 184 that I wanted to include a little more fully:

"Mom, Uncle Stanley is behaving inappropriately," I said.
"Oh, you're probably imagining it," she said.
"He groped me! And he's wanking off!"
Mom cocked her head and looked concerned. "Poor Stanley," she said. "He's so lonely."
"But it was gross!"
Mom asked me if I was okay. I shrugged and nodded. "Well, there you go," she said. She said that sexual assault was a crime of perception. "If you don't think you're hurt, then you aren't," she said. "So many women make such a big deal out of these things. But you're stronger than that."

This is me, throwing myself out a window because a mother actually said that to her 13 year old daughter.

The fact that Walls can write this memoir with love and compassion is a testament to her own resilience. The writing itself is strong, the story is compelling and haunting. And eventually she gets her own happy ending. It took me several days to work through it but I know it will stick with me for a long time.