This is mostly a thing with “writers”, people who blog, etc.

Being obscure and incoherent does not make you more artistic.  No, no it doesn’t.  Swearing and poetry that sounds like you were on acid when you wrote it (perhaps you were) DOES NOT make you high art.

Stop it.

I seem to be on a kick these days for semi-autobiographical books about difficult childhoods.  Like The Glass Castle, Lullabies is the story of a young girl growing up in less than ideal conditions.  The main character “Baby” (her name screams something indefinable about her parents right off the bat) is growing up with her father in Montreal.  They live a life of constant moves, illness, hunger, and drugs.  Eventually Baby garners the interest of the neighbourhood pimp, Alphonse.  Heather O’Neill does a remarkable job of giving Baby a voice.  She is easy to believe, and you follow her through the ages of 11-13, as she undergoes many changes with no one there to guide her.  Her mother is dead and her father Jules, who is 27 at the beginning of the book, is a heroin user who tries to raise his daughter but doesn’t quite get there.  The character of Baby is one of the best I’ve seen in this genre, and she walks the line between vulnerable and tough with little trouble.  She is particularly believable in her view of things that happen to her as “no big deal”.  A good example is when for the first and only time at age 13 her father hits her and leaves her with a black eye.  Baby, rather than feeling sorry for herself, or scared, thinks about how cool she’ll look at school on Monday.  They black eye gives her “street cred”.  One more experience to add to her list.  Unfortunately, like many children of bad situations, she doesn’t realize that certain things are supposed to make her scared or uncomfortable.  That line has long been erased.  I really enjoyed this book, and finished it in about 3 hours.  It helped to have a sense of Montreal.  It always helps to be able to visualize your environment.  I could totally picture Baby wandering St. Catherine street.

I haven’t read a book this quickly in a very long time.  2.5 hours, cover to cover.  Of course those 2.5 hours had to be the ones between midnight and 2:30 a.m.  I picked up the book from the library yesterday.  I thought to read a bit before bed, since I only had the book for a week (it’s part of the Express Reads collection – copies of highly in demand books that cannot be reserved.  They’re available first come, first served, and you can borrow them for a week.  When you’re # 140 or so on the request list, this can be a godsend).

And of course that “little bit” lead to me finishing the book.

The Glass Castle is Jeanette Walls’ memoirs of her childhood.  Like one generally expects, her experiences and memories are far from common or ideal.  Still, she manages to make you long for something as you read her book.  Perhaps it’s the us-against-the-world flavour that colours her interactions with most of her siblings.  It’s tough to say. 

I was the perfect audience for this book from the first page, where it sucked me in with Jeanette’s story about riding in a cab down a New York City street one night and seeing her homeless mother rummaging through a dumpster.  She ducks; hoping not to be seen, and then is forced to reflect on her mixed feelings of shame and guilt that having a homeless mother invokes.  At one point she recounts a story of a professor asking her opinion on homelessness, and she replies, “sometimes, people get the life they choose.”  Her teacher and classmates look at her like she’s grown horns. 

I could relate to her feelings all too well.  I was gone from the first page.

Overall the book was a poignant read, not overly saccharine or dramatic.  And although there were times I wanted to roll my eyes at the whole “Look what I overcame!” tone, the Glass Castle ultimately felt like a looking glass, and left me feeling just a little bit homesick.