The Glass Castle
42. THE GLASS CASTLE, BY JEANNETTE WALLSThis one was recommended by everybodysomething on Tumblr, Michelle Ruedin on Goodreads and two other people in real life. After that, I had no choice but to read it...
I’m not a big fan of nonfiction, so it was a big surprise to me how much I enjoyed this book. It’s amazingly well written, holding your attention from start to finish and being superbly sensitive with the treatment given to the characters (they are, after all, real people).
I really liked it, and it was an enormously compelling story, magistrally told. There are many topics for discussion in here, but there is one in particular that I can’t help but mention: HER PARENTS WERE INSANE. I don’t mean this in the pejorative way, I am a healthcare professional and her father was definitely a schizophrenic (really, he’s like a textbook case). Her mother also has problems, I’m just not so sure precisely what illness she had, since her symptoms are much more general (but I would say narcissistic borderline personality based on what I have).
I find that very interesting, coupled with the episode she describes of when she was at college and, when asked about homeless people, she said that “if some of them were willing to work hard and make compromises, they might not have ideal lives, but they could make ends meet.” Obviously, she had no idea (and probably still doesn’t) that her parents weren’t just very lazy and bone-headed, but if they had been given the drugs they needed to stabilize their brain chemistry, they WOULD have been able to work hard and make compromises.
Up next: Tempting the Player, by Kat Latham