The Glass Castle

I literally stumbled across this book on someone else's night table. The back cover was enough to make me go buy it and read it all in the same day.

Written by Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle is the story of growing up with parents unlike any other. Her father and mother refused to live a normal life, always moving from one town to the next, always one step ahead of bill collectors, and never allowing their children to become truly settled or accepted.

The book is filled with stories and anecdotes that I'm sure most of us have never experienced, and especially not at the hands of our own parents - and yet Walls conveys nothing but love and possibly admiration for her parents throughout the book. After finishing the book - half of me was appalled at the parents' behavior, and the other half wanted to experience a childhood that was as exciting and filled with adventures as hers.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

For starters, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (AHWSG for short) is a fantastic title which immediately caught my attention. It also made me suspicious that the book would fail to live up to my expectations. Fortunately, in addition to a clever title, the book has intriguing cover art so I went ahead and bought it anyway.
Dave Eggars is a clever author who is well aware that he is not actually as clever as he presumes to be, but presumes it anyway. His story begins painfully as the author and his siblings suffer the death of both parents to different cancers in less than a year. What follows is a memoir documenting how the author moved on with his life while learning to be responsible for not just his own life, but his younger brother Toph's as well. I found the relationship between the author and Toph to be the most interesting part of the book. Toph is the source of all Eggars' greatest joys and deepest fears.
Eggars' writing is self absorbed in a playful way. He dares to write down the things that we all think to ourselves about ourselves, but would never dare to say out loud; most of the time it works for him.
The result is a memoir that not only chronicles what happened in the author's life but reveals just how cool the author thought he was when the events were happening.
I have seen a lot written about the "clever" introduction to the book, but I am not commenting on it because I did not particularly enjoy it. What works stylistically in the book crosses the line into "cutesy" in the intro in my opinion. If you pick up this book and don't like the intro, don't give up on it. Skip it and move into the memoir.
Overall a very enjoyable read with interesting characters. It is a memoir, but reads like fiction.

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