I had so many moments where I forgot that I was listening to an audio book and lapsed into full-fledged conversation with Jeannette Walls. "These parents in the Glass Castle... WTF on every page." is what I texted to my sister when it just seemed like the never-ending train of neglect and abuse rolled on. I couldn't understand how Jeannette turned out so normal. How she could forgive her parents. The story starts with a grown up Jeannette seeing her mother picking items from a garbage dumpster in a New York City alley. Then it travels back in time to a three year old Jeannette who is terribly scarred when a stove top flame catches her dress on fire. And then it travels forward. With Jeannette, her older sister Laurie, younger brother Brian and baby sister Maureen transported across the country by their parents. Who can never seem to settle down or "straighten up." Their mother, a trained teacher, elects to spend her time painting and writing novels and stories that are consistently rejected. Their father, a former Air Force pilot and engineer, works for about six months at a time before being fired. He is an alcoholic. Neither parent ever seems to be able to put their children first, a fact that becomes painfully more obvious when the family moves from the desert landscapes Jeannette and the older siblings are used to, and on to Welch, West Virginia, where their dad grew up and where their grandmother probably sexually abused him. Good grief. A multi-generational horribleness sets in. But all of this is told in a rather matter of fact way, by a woman who is entirely grateful to have had her siblings to navigate and survive with. Even when their parents chose booze or jewelry over putting food on the table and let their kids dig food from the trash, the siblings look out for one another and each gain they get is hard won and hard fought. I won't go into detail of every issue of neglect that's committed by the parents in this story, but ultimately, Laurie is able to leave for New York where she pursues her dream of being an artist. Rather than wait out her time in Welch, Jeannette follows to finish her senior year in New York. Brian follows suit the next year when he enters the 12th grade. And much to the relief of the siblings, Maureen is permitted to move to New York under Laurie's care at the age of 12. Their children all gone the parents wait a while and then follow them to New York, where they spend time homeless and on the streets and then eventually squatting in an abandoned building. If it wasn't a memoir I would have thought I was reading a piece of hard fiction. But the fact that this was someone's life is rather amazing. It's a sad truth that some people are not able to set aside the mental illness or addictions that prevent them from being fully there for others. And in the end, I think Jeannette forgives her parents for that, if she even felt like she needed to. She knew they loved her in their own flawed ways. If she can forgive them, who am I to hold a grudge. But I am going to hug my kids tighter today AND when I see them, my own mom and dad.
5/5 Stars.
I spent 33 hours listening to The Bonfire of the Vanities and three days thinking about it and I'm still not really sure what I want to say. What a big book. What an indictment on the 80s culture. What an examination of selfish agendas. And everyone in this book has an agenda.
Sherman McCoy is a Wall Street bond trader - a self proclaimed "Master of the Universe" who is so filled with conceit and superiority that he flagrantly carries on an affair with a young woman, Maria Ruskin, married to a septuagenarian of dubious income. The two liaise in a rent controlled apartment mere blocks from the home Sherman shares with his wife and child.
After picking Maria up from the airport one evening, Sherman distractedly drives past the exit for Manhattan and ends up deep in the Bronx where he promptly gets lost, freaks out about all the people of color around, and in attempting to make a hasty escape, is involved in a hit and run accident where a young man is injured.
Maria is more than happy to forget the incident ever happened, but it dogs Sherman. And rightfully so it turns out because a drunk newspaper has been is forced to write a story about the injured young man, stretching the facts to make the young man look like a high school valedictorian saint, and well a media circus and a district attorney up for reelection later....
Few of the characters in the book have redeeming qualities in the least and there is much to dislike about many of them and their motives, whether for filling their own pockets at the expense of the mob, or attempting to hold on to money power or influence - Wolf has a mastery of the minutiae which really tells you what you what you need to know about a character. Wolf's writing has a flow and a style all it's own which made this book a joy to read, even if it did get a little long in the tooth in sections.
It's too bad the movie is so universally panned, because I would have enjoyed watching it at this point.
4/5 Stars.
Thank goodness for business travel. A six hour round-trip drive to Southern Illinois where the only successful outcome was my finishing The Rosie Effect. I absolutely loved the first book of this "series", the Rosie Project (you can read that review here). While I wasn't quite as tickled with this sequel, the writing, the humor and the beloved characters are all still there. This time the stakes are a bit higher.Don and Rosie are living in New York City. Don is a professor at Columbia University and Rosie is finishing her PhD thesis in psychology while also beginning an MD program. When Rosie gets pregnant, hilarity and misunderstanding ensue. However, as Don and Rosie have now been married for ten months, I would have expected the characters to have gotten a bit better in the communication department. However, they let self-doubt get in the way of their relationship and I did actually feel a bit of stress about the characters and what they were going through. In the meantime, we meet a few new friends, George, an aging rocker with a string of bad marriages and one really messed up kid; Lydia, a terribly judgmental social worker and some other new minor friends. The biggest disappointment was Rosie herself. In the first book she's likeable and moves Don in new directions. She's not perfect, but you can relate to her. In this book, she's a shell character, a plot point. She's compelling action from Don without any reciprocal understanding. I was outraged on Don's behalf that she would become pregnant without telling him, and then judging him on how he reacted, how he prepared, whether he felt "connected" to the baby, and then somehow deciding he wasn't going to be a good father, even though ALL evidence in the book pointed to the contrary. Don is a loyal friend, and a reasoned sensible mentor. He helps Gene's children through issues and into eventual reconciliation with their father. He's constantly doing nice things for people because he is good as solving problems logically. Rosie misses all of this, despite being the only one to see it in the first book. Cheapening out Rosie's character to somehow create dramatic tension wasn't fitting with the characters. Definitely not as good as the first, but then, Don is still a great character. Try not to be disappointed.
3/5 Stars
