1040
April 16, 2024

Book tip: "Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

A short preliminary remark

Some books entertain us, others make us cry, laugh or think. That borders on magic for me, because after all, each book is just a pile of printed paper in our hands. The stories are created in the mind. Stephen King once said that there is a kind of telepathic connection between space and time between author and reader. Thoughts written down in his Maine writing room come to life in the mind of a reader thousands of miles away. And even years or decades after he wrote them down. Magic, right?

I read a book a few days ago, where this particular form of magic (or telepathy) was felt more strongly than many other books. It has changed my view of the world and of myself for a while. Maybe just now, where the story still resonates in me, maybe in the long run, who knows? For that, too, is one of the qualities of a good book: it can change us if we allow the magic.

The book

Rarely has the well-known phrase? Stories that life writes? so perfectly hit the mark. Jeannette Wall's novel? Glass Castle? Catches his reader with full force, often relentlessly, never sentimental and always authentic. Walls tells the story of her own childhood in nearly 400 pages in her debut novel. She describes in her first-person perspective poverty, privations and the constant escape attempts of her parents to creditors, bounced landlords or the youth welfare office. These are the dark and heavy moments of her young life. But she also tells of the bright moments, the sibling love among the three children and the free freedom of her nomadic existence.

Mom and Dad Walls are a well-rehearsed team. On the one hand, the egocentric mother, who poses her own development as a supposed artist about the well-being of children. She sees her life in constant existence as the logical price for her freedom. On the other side, the father, a handsome daydreamer and drunkard, who routinely outperforms and regularly fails a plan to get rich. For years, he fantasizes about the "glass castle", which he will build for his family as soon as everything goes better. And then of course there are Jeannette herself and her first two, in the course of the story three siblings. Money and food are just as scarce in the Walls home as new clothes or furniture. And if the rent has not been paid again for too long, the family will take off in the shelter of the night.

Jeannette Walls portrays her memories of these states and experiences without any pathos, it does not require exaggeration or exaggeration to illustrate the effects of these living conditions. Far too soon, the children have to take responsibility for themselves, their siblings and often enough for their parents. Normal friendships with other children are hardly possible due to the frequent, fleeing relocations and their unavoidable poverty. Both parents become more and more entangled in their own problems, losing sight of their children and the chaos takes its course. Buy now Castle of Glass 9,99 ?

The author

?Castle of Glass? has sold 4.2 million copies so far and has been translated into 31 languages. As poor Jeannette Walls was as a child, today she is so successful as a successful author. This novel might never have been written had it not been for this one key experience in Jeannette Wall's life.

After 17 years at home? Escapes, she struggles to New York and crawls under her older sister. With phone jobs, she finances a degree, to which her father contributes $ 950 and a poker won mink coat. In 1987, Jeannette is now 27, she gets a job as a gossip columnist at New York Magazine. She marries a successful entrepreneur and writes about the life of New York's high society. Everything is going well if it were not for her parents, who now live in an occupied house in the Bronx district of New York.

When Jeannette goes by taxi to a party, she sees out of the car window her mother digging for food in a garbage bin. Deeply shaken, she drives home and decides to write down the story of her family. This is the birth of "Castle of Glass". Meanwhile Jeannette Walls lives with her second husband, also a writer, on a farm in Virginia. On the property she has built a second house: For her mother.

?Many people ask, how can you forgive your mother? But I did not forgive her. I have accepted her and what has happened.? - Jeanette Walls