Book Review: The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle

By Jeannette Walls

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That line pretty much sums up this memoir. I have to admit that the first page had me hooked in this story. It started with a woman driving to a fancy party and spots her mother dumpster diving. She feels ashamed and worries that someone might figure out that it is her mother living on the streets, so she turns around and goes back to her Upper East Side apartment. You know this is going to be quite the tale.

You might be thinking that this is going to be a whiny story or a story about huge family fall-outs and hard times and tough decisions. And in part, it is. But on the other side of the spectrum, Walls describes it all with such simplicity and such clarity and removal that it just moves you along, half believing, half disbelieving. Someone described her voice having a ‘childlike innocence’ and there is a touch of that. But there is also a voice that is very reasoned. Very seeing. Very telling.

When I wasn’t reading this story, I was thinking about it. At one point, a little over half way through, the book became an addiction. I wanted to read it and when I wasn’t, I was thinking about reading it. I would wonder where the story would take me over the next few unread pages. To make the addiction worse, every scene is short. Only a few pages, which allows you fall into the, ‘just until the next scene break’. Only you know you’re going to read more. You can’t help yourself. You reach the end of the scene and you getting wondering about the next one, so you have to read on.

Walls grew up doing the skedaddle (leaving in the middle of the night, breaking out of hospitals before the bill came due, etc), moving around (usually when money really, really ran out), finding her own food, adventuring and doing more living and growing up than the average North American child. A family of six, the Wall’s were never rich and often lived on very little. Jeannette’s father, a brilliant entrepreneur who like many like him, had trouble hanging onto a long term job, and eventually became an alcoholic and gambler, leaving the family for nights and days at a time while he tried to earn enough money so he could make his inventions some to fruition or to root out union corruption. Her mother, an artist with a free spirit and a firm belief that everyone should make their own path and look out for themselves, was occasionally pushed back into her teaching career by her hungry and frustrated children.

The adventures the Wall’s family had are incredible. When I began reading the story, I was shaking my head and thinking, this is unbelievable. Then I began thinking about my own childhood and came to realize that really, it wasn’t that her life was so incredible, it was simply the amount of incredible things that happened to her. In other words, she had more than her fair share. It’s like taking chunks of Maya Angelou’s childhood, a touch of Dave Peltzer’s, a smidgen of Antwone Fisher’s, a thread of Malika Oufkir’s and a sprinkling of one’s own and rolling it all into one. To say the book was interesting is an understatement.

When you look at the individual pieces of Wall’s life, it isn’t that different. We all struggle in our own ways. The local librarian, who also read the book (book club), said Wall’s childhood was similar to her own in many ways. We compared the bits that were like our own and in which we could identify. For her, the parents were reversed. For me, there were several parallels, such as living in an unusual building, having a father who made bunk-beds for me and my brother, I might have burned down part of a shred (purely by accident) and other such events.

Really, we aren’t all that different. And as for Jeannette Walls, I think I’d like to meet her.

The Pristines

Looking for something to do? How about popping over to the Oram family Christmas website? The Christmasy part isn’t really done yet. It might not even get finished if past years serve as an example. We tend to get distracted, bored and wander off. However, one year we did a nice photo journal of the turkey being cooked on Christmas day. So you never know.

Oops, got distracted. The Pristines! How could I forget? The Pristines are like the Nobel Prize for everyday items that make one’s life better. And the best part is that ‘better’ is defined by the nominator. So, go on over there and nominate something worthy of a Pristine. Or simply drop by and vote for the 8 lucky nominees.

Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl

by Philippa Gregory

This book is the fictionalization of Anne Boleyn’s rise to Queen of England during the 1500s from her sister, Mary Boleyn’s point of view (although two scenes sneak in there from Anne’s point of view). You can tell that the author did a great deal of research and is knowledgeable in terms of the costumes, customs, mannerisms and even moods/dispositions of the various members that play out their roles in the rise (and fall) of the Boleyn family. Although I’m uncertain whether Mary would be sincerely bothered by the role and lack of rights women had during that era, it allowed me to like Mary in a way that I could not like her power hungry sister, Anne.

Despite the details to things like costume and setting, I was a little disappointed by the mistakes in the book. And I don’t mean historical mistakes–I give the author pure artistic license in those regards. What I mean are things like under the heading of Spring 1536, I expect it to be spring and not January. I’m fairly certain that the seasons have not changed since the 1500s and that January was considered winter, as it is now. Generally, I don’t often notice mistakes like those when I am reading a piece for entertainment, but it got to the point where I began to expect errors such as on the last page. In this case, Mary waits for her children to fall asleep on the boat before talking to her husband. When he replies seconds later, the children are awake and leaning over the bow. My guess is that the editors and author were in a rush to get the story out and small details were missed, particularly if they were last minute add-ins.

Otherwise, it was a good story with an interesting insight into history–it made me do a little research just to see how close she was to the truth and I’ll admit, I did research the odd spoiler. Doh! Either way, a book that expands my interest and knowledge is always welcome, especially when done in an entertaining manner.

If you like this book, you may also like The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson. It’s another good one. In fact, I had to keep reminding myself that it was a fictional piece. (I had to do that with Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible as well–although that one isn’t historical fiction like the above two mentions are.)

Enjoy!

Book Review: Through the Storm

Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World

By Lynne Spears and Lorilee Craker

Lynne says early in the book: “I’m not terribly exciting, truth be told. But my family has had an exceptional journey—really, a wild ride—and people think they know us from what they read. But they really don’t know us at all.” This is part of the reason why I read this book, it was an attempt to gain an insider’s view on how things evolved from an enviable quick rise to fame followed by a heartbreaking, well publicized fall. I always wondered what are the pressures? What is it really like?

If you are looking for more dirt on Britney and the nitty gritty details, you aren’t going to get it here. This is very much her mother’s memoir. The memoir, at times very organic in terms of storytelling, shows how Lynne and Britney walked through each door opportunity presented until all at once the family had run smack up against fame. At times, the writers build the story on the assumption that the reader is well acquainted with the Spears family and the tabloid news that surrounds them. If you aren’t familiar with the history and the timeline of how Britney rose to fame, it can be frustrating trying to keep up as it jumps around. If I were to pick a favourite scene, it would by far be the scene when Lynne shot up her alcoholic husband’s cooler of beer and wine.

Inspiration?

You’re the meaning in my life, you’re the inspiration…Oops sorry. Got that song stuck in my head now.

So, I was reading my horrorscope today and look what it said:
“The Moon’s entry into your 12th House of Imagination can jump-start a fantasy today. But you’ll need to suspend disbelief in order for the dream to take hold. Don’t waste energy now trying to clarify the fiction and flush out the facts. Just appreciate the whole story for the creative masterpiece it is; you can always come back and analyze it on another day.”

It’s interesting as my online critique group and I were discussing this sort of thing just yesterday. Do you just let it flow? Do you tweak as you go? Some of us are tweakers and agonize how long it takes to get a first draft down. Some of us are flow types and agonize over how long it takes us to edit. Looking over my horoscope, I guess it means I should just write down whatever comes to mind during my writing session this afternoon and worry about editing and fixing and adding to it some other time.

Sweet. I can handle that.