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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Jeannette Walls, 2006, Scribner, New York<\/p>\n
This book is a bit hard to fathom.\u00c2\u00a0 There are elements that ring true and then there are things that seem to be a bit of a stretch.<\/p>\n
Walls’ parents seemed to be extremely intelligent and loving, but also suffered from an extreme inability to cope with society and modern day life.\u00c2\u00a0 While some would call\u00c2\u00a0it mental illness, the fact is that there are many individuals in our society who seem to have some form of this, although not to\u00c2\u00a0this extreme.\u00c2\u00a0 It manisfests itself in a distrust of all forms of authority and a total disdain for the “normal” ways of life.\u00c2\u00a0 The usual result is that these individuals end up being much less successful in terms of their standard of living and other achievements.\u00c2\u00a0 The book does a good job of describing just how poorly decisions are made and the corresponding poor results.\u00c2\u00a0 In the case of the author’s family, the result is that they live in poverty and squalor, despite their considerable talents and opportunities.<\/p>\n
Walls does a good job of bringing out her parents’ characters.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite their obvious shortcomings as parents, she continues to love each of them and recounts numerous situations where she connects with them.\u00c2\u00a0 Her father and mother each have their good points, love their children, and are not abusive to them in any way.\u00c2\u00a0 They are, however, complete failures in their ability to properly provide for their offspring.<\/p>\n
I found that I could understand the author’s love of her parents while she recounts their defects.\u00c2\u00a0 I could not, however, understand her acceptance of their behavior.\u00c2\u00a0 She seems, for the most part, to “go along for the ride” and accept whatever they do, no matter how ridiculous their actions are.\u00c2\u00a0 She strikes out\u00c2\u00a0on her own to make herself successful, but she never seems to stand up to her parents and put her foot down, rather just accepting that this is the way they are.\u00c2\u00a0 One example of this is that she continued to give her father money for booze when the rest of the family was starving.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this illustrates how much the power her love of her father had over her, but I thought that, just for once, she could have and should have told him no.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I thought the book was fairly well written and told a story\u00c2\u00a0of a situation that is probably more common than most would think possible.\u00c2\u00a0 At the same time,\u00c2\u00a0I felt that, for some reason, it didn’t all ring true.\u00c2\u00a0 I finished the book thinking that maybe in the author’s mind, this was the way it was, but time has a tendency to\u00c2\u00a0make one look at the past a bit differently from what actually transpired.\u00c2\u00a0 I think this may be the case\u00c2\u00a0in this memoir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Jeannette Walls, 2006, Scribner, New York This book is a bit hard to fathom.\u00c2\u00a0 There are elements that ring true and then there are things that seem to be a bit of a stretch. Walls’ parents seemed to be …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,16],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-memoir","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}