The never Built Castle - book review of the glass castle
When Jeannette is young her family travels from place to place and is very poor. Her mother is an artist, and stays at home, although she has a teaching degree and teaches classes occasionally when necessary. Her father, Rex Walls, finds what jobs he can, but they never last long. He is a very smart engineer who is closest with Jeannette. But he spends all the money he earns on alcohol. The reason this book is named the Glass Castle is because Rex Walls always promised to build the family a castle made from glass when they have enough money. As you may guess, the castle was never built.
I think that the idea of the glass castle perfectly described Rex and his parenting philosophy. He always wanted to do the best he could for his kids. It is apparent that he loves them very much, but his drinking problem controlled him, and made it impossible to have a steady income and provide all he wanted to for his family. One of my favorite examples of this is that one year for Christmas they had no money to get presents. So Rex took his kids outside one by one, and let them pick out their very own star. That is the positive side of Mr. Walls. That is the side that teaches his kids to read years before they even come close to a school, and the side that makes his kids do their math homework in binary, because he has taught them math skills grades above all the other kids. Another Christmas, all the kids save for weeks so they can have a good end to the year, because things have been especially hard lately. That year Rex gets drunk, and when he gets a lighter as a gift, he burns down the Christmas tree and all the presents. This is the side of Rex that is controlled by his addiction and spends all the money he earns, and even some he doesn't have on beer. This side of Mr. Walls got into a fight with his wife, and almost threw her out the window. This is the side that locked his three kids and newborn child in the back of a U-Haul truck for several hours. Rex never seem to want to change himself or deal with his addiction, but I think his good deeds outweigh his bad ones, even if the good ones were never accomplished.
As a young girl Jeannette is fine with moving about, but when she gets a little older her parents finally buy a house. It is not a real house; it is a shack that is falling apart. Worse still is that they don’t do anything to fix it, even as it crumbles to the ground. After a few years, her older sister, Lori, moves to New York to escape her impoverished life. A year later Jeannette joins her. Eventually their little brother, and sister join them, and after that their parents move there too. All the children seem to lead regular lives, despite their insane childhood.
My favorite character is Lori. She does not always take care of her siblings, but she does her best. She also takes good care of her mother. At some points in the book, Lori seems to take more care of her mother than her mother ever has to her children. Lori also works hard to go to New York, she was the first one to take the risk of leaving, and because she is doing well there, her siblings could join her. By her taking the risk to leave the crazy nest her parents built, she enabled her siblings to join her on the route to a sane life.
In all honesty, I could not relate to this book at all. I don’t think that should come as a surprise. My parents have lived in Philadelphia for twenty-two years, and have provided a good living environment for me and my brothers. Despite the fact that I could not relate to the book, I enjoyed it very much. I wanted to keep on reading, partly to find out what would happen next, and partly to see how Jeannette grew up to be a well-respected writer, and to see what would happen to her siblings, and parents.
I recommend this book to just about anybody. At some points it seem like fiction, and it is amazing to think that these things really happened. I cannot think of anything that should change about this book; it was well written, and Jeannette’s experiences were told in a beautiful way. This book is written with a loving hand. Jeannette could have focused on all the times she w
ent to bed hungry, and every blanket she wish she had in the winter, but she did not. She wrote about the times her family sat around reading books, and the adventures they all had together. She decided not to hate her parents for not always being able to feed her, and instead love them for wishing they could feed her. Despite the insanity she describes in her book, you can feel her love for her siblings, and parents radiating from every page.
