Reading Challenge Update

I finished another book last week, but never got around to blogging it, silly Velma that I am.

When I was at Sit 'n' Knit at YARN in Eureka last Sunday, Sunni & Saremy & I got talking about dark memoirs. When they heard how much I enjoyed Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors, they both said I needed to read The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Sunni had a copy for me to borrow, & I finished it in under 3 days.

Written in a play-by-play documentation of events style, the reader is offered little in the way of insight into the emotional effects of growing up in a family where independence is valued over safety and where poverty and neglect reached appalling lows, but ...mIt is a bare-all memoir from a woman who survived the caprices of a big dreamin', booze-addled but brilliant father & a possibly bipolar "adventure addict" artistic mother who preferred painting to providing for her children.

Written in a play-by-play documentation of events style, the reader is offered little in the way of insight into the emotional effects of growing up in a family where independence is valued over safety and where poverty and neglect reached appalling lows, but also a family of extraordinary intellect and resilience. Life with the Walls' was, apparently, never dull.

Hopefully Walls will proffer a sequel describing what marks such a childhood left on her. No wonder this woman is now a gossip columnist.

A page-turner that I thoroughly enjoyed, if for no other reason than it reminded me how lucky I am. Dark but entertaining. I gave it a 4/5 stars.

Up next: The Mapping of Love and Death, a mystery by Jacqueline Winspear.

Tags: books, reading, Glass Castle