The Glass Castle was recommended on the second day of the grief workshop. I don’t know if it’s part of the standard reading assignments or if the facilitator thought it was something I should get after hearing snippets of my childhood.
I didn’t put the book down until I finished it at 3:30am. Now don’t get too excited to get a copy. It’s not some suspense thriller that will give you an adrenaline rush.
Lifting from the synopsis, The Glass Castle is a memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant.
I am not sure if everyone would find it to be as much of a page-turner as I did. I’m thinking it will only be interesting to those who can strongly identify with it.
I couldn’t put it down not because it kept me guessing. The author, Jeannette Walls is described as a journalist in New York who also wrote The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
Apparently, she didn’t turn out so bad. But more than the assurance that someone with her upbringing can do well in life, I desperately wanted to know how she did it.
How do you rise above the mess? How do you simultaneously escape and embrace your past? How do you get on without being so afraid?
