The Glass Castle

I finished reading "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls over the Thanksgiving weekend.  I began reading this book earlier in the fall but the craziness of the beginning of the school year, and let's face it, baking cookies and blogging about it, kept me from really sinking my teeth into it.  I'd start the book and re-start it.  Finally, I was able to dedicate more reading time to my life and got to the point where I get with a lot of books.

I. Could. Not. Put. It. Down.

I generally read fiction, so I can handle the absolutely insane things that might happen in a book I'm reading.  "It's not real," I tell myself, just like I tell Owen when we're watching something on television that seems to be a little too intense for his five-year old mind to process. 

But that wasn't the case while I was reading The Glass Castle.  This book is based on the real-life upbringing of Jeannette Walls and it made me crazy, as a parent, to know that two grown adults (Jeannette's parents) made the choices in their lives that they did when they had four children they were responsible for. 

I'm not going to be a spoiler and tell you all that happens from about the time Jeannette was three years old to what I imagine is almost present day.  I am going to tell you this.  It is a wonder she has turned out to, not only be alive, but to be a well-adjusted, normal and successful human being.

I found myself vocally angry with her parents throughout many parts of this book.  Ask my husband.  He'd be sitting there on the couch watching football, and then I'd exclaim something like, "You've got to be kidding me!  That's so ridiculous!"  And then he'd look over thinking I was reacting to a bad call from the game on television!

I'm preparing to read Ms. Walls' follow-up book, "Half Broke Horses."  This is said to be the tale of her maternal grandmother's life.  So maybe this one will keep my blood pressure in check!