The Glass Castle

The other night I finished The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls. Every time I read a memoir of someone who is not famous (at least not very) I am amazed at how someone I'm not emotionally connected to or interested in can captivate me with the story of their life, and Walls' tale was no different.

Reading the story of her life I kept thinking how incredibly normal her parents seemed in so many respects and, of course, how incredibly dysfunctional they were. It's also interesting that, despite their childhood, three of the four Walls children seemed to be fairly successful in their adult lives, and certainly raised themselves out of the poverty they knew as children. With poverty these days seeming to pass from generation to generation, it's interesting to question what made their family different.