The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

This book was really good, and either so well told or so different from my own experience that it's hard to believe as truth... but I got it in the biography section of the bookstore and it does say memoir right on the front, so I guess it must be so.
 
I really enjoyed the author's writing style. I read a bit of the introduction and bought it, she's a good storyteller. It's like she paints a coat of glaring reality.. or some such thing that makes the story so palpable, over the plot (which is fascinating enough on its own.
 
I thought this book did a great job of outlining the positives and negatives about people and situations. The parents were very interesting. They were learned people, more so than the average joe, and they taught their kids so many things and really stimulated them intellectually. They were inventive and artistic and let their kids be who they wanted to be and discover the world at their own pace. However, they were far from perfect. The mother had a very laiser faire attitude about raising the kids, though this could just be my personal bias as I was raised in a more stuctured household. When the kids are struggling with problems or when something isn't going right, she doesn't get too involved in their lives and either focuses on herself or brushes whatever it is off telling them to be stronger. So while her artistic hairbrainedness is wonderful and fun, it also backfires a bit. And I also didn't enjoy her relationship with her husband who lorded over her.
 
The husband was interesting because he was such a creative, inventive guy. When he put his mind to something he got a solution to whatever it was that fixed the problem (though to be fair kids can be easily pleased, especially without any prior world views to taint the perspectives their parents throw at them) and he was so intelligent and cared so much for his kids, but he was a drunk and used his intelligence poorly in inappropriate settings and he was somewhat pigheaded. Also, despite this intelligence he and his family coast along the bottom half of the economic scale.
 
I think they were both wonderful characters and would have loved to meet them in real life. I love their view on the world, if not so much the negative executions, and think they're both really metaphorical characters and really display how something can have both a good and bad side well. I think the mother says at one point -life has both tragedy and comedy, you should focus more on the comedy than the tragedy- or something like that. There's a good and bad to everything... though at some point this philosophy could lead to intentional blindness to certain aspects of a situation.