January’s Book Club selection is The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wells.  A memoir of a young woman’s childhood growing up with nomadic parents who make less-than-great parenting decisions…

I have to say I am not usually a fan of memoirs… I always have such a hard time believing everything that goes on.  I always assume that this person is a storyteller, and storytellers usually embellish…  But throwing that notion aside, I have to say I truly enjoyed The Glass Castle.  In times it seemed as though the author was embellishing, for her sake I truly hope so.  The story border lined  on funny, Wells does a great job setting the scene for her, her siblings and her crazy parents.  Just when you find yourself chuckling however you take a step back and realize that the author just made reference to eating cat food and you find yourself saddened that any child would have to grow up in these conditions.  To me that was the beauty of Wells’ writing.  She wanted her readers to feel like they were on the crazy adventure of life with her and the best the Wells children could do is grin, bear it and try to get in a good laugh when you can.

Unfortunately, I was a disappointed with the ending.  I felt as though Wells spent so much time going into the details of her childhood, and yet she blew by so many details of adulthood.  The story begins with our narrator Jeanette seeing her homeless mother rifle through trash alongside a New York street.  Hardly a chapter later the reader is taken back almost twenty-five years while Wells recounts many stories of her past.  As a reader I was anxious to get back to the place we started along side that New York street and exactly how the characters got there.  The detail to which Wells explored her childhood simply wasn’t there when she began recounting her experiences as an adult.  Understandable however, considering the amount of emotion, baggage and turmoil an adult would go through after her childhood could probably be a book in and of itself.

Overall I enjoyed The Glass Castle for an interesting look into a life so unlike my own.  I recommend it to anyone who wants an  easy and entertaining read as well as an eye-opening look at how children and adults off “the grid” manage to live in America.