The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls) - Memoir

(review by Mirjam)
(I know Ashly and Jenn would love it. )
PG 13 for language (at least it;'s not made up for entertainment value)

Jeannette's sisters Lori, Maureen and brother Brian, endured a childhood that could have been torn out of the history pages citing the Great Depression. Starvation, bad hygiene, and lack of personal safety was an everyday habit in the Walls home - or homes - since they moved from town to town.
Both parents were incredibly bright and talented beings. Sadly, they had big schemes on which they could never follow through. Rex Walls was a mathematician who came from a squalor home in West Virginia, and Rose Mary was a prolific artist.

My favorite moments from the book is Jeannette using a black marker on her knee so the hole in her black tights would not show. Every chapter leaves you speechless.

A tree grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

(review by Mirjam)



When I read this book I kept shaking my head. The story sounded so much like my own. My family circumstances and location (ha ha) of course were different. We sucked on pickled cucumbers when we were hungry, we sold paper and metal scraps for change and buy broken hard candy to suck on etc.
It was such an interesting book. The reviews on Amazon were really good, too.

Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published over 50 years ago. Her frank writing about life's squalor was alarming to some of the more genteel society, but the book's humor and pathos ensured its place in the realm of classics--and in the hearts of readers, young and old.