the glass castle.

This book was equally fascinating and tragic. So so tragic. I stayed up past 1:30am last night to finish it, hoping I would find some satisfaction in the ending. I kind of did?? Here's the synopsis:

"The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered."

It was hard to read. The parents infuriated me. I wanted to rescue the kids. I knew there wouldn't be a "happy" ending, but I was hoping for more closure, I guess. But hey, it's a true story so I can't complain that the author screwed up the ending or anything. That's just the way it ended. If you read it, be prepared to be appalled and devastated by what those kids went through, and what their parents didn't save them from. I'm glad I read it. It made me grateful for a lot of things. Food. Clothing. Indoor plumbing. A furnace. A functional family. You know, the basic things that you don't think twice about on a normal day!

*There was a lot of swearing, but it didn't bother me too much for some reason. Maybe because it's a memoir and wouldn't have been authentic or effective without it.