I am reading the Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, and the way she writes is very unique, and it really captivates the reader, but makes it a pretty easy read also; I am loving this book!
Walls talks about her experiences as a child in a very blunt way, almost like dry humor. She doesn't talk about her experiences as like "It was so crazy!" or "I was super scared and though I was going to die!" She tells them just as they were, but you get the sense that it was crazy or whatever, even if she doesn't deliberately say it like that. It's almost like she says it as if she was writing from a child's perspective, from what it was like at that age that she was, because at that time, she probably wasn't thinking "my parents are crazy letting me do this!" She writes from what it felt like to her; it seemed normal because it was all she had ever known.
She skips around, and just tells many different snippets of her life, but they all contribute to an overarching theme, a sense you start to get. In the beginning, her experiences are sort of mild and normal, but they get weirder and more dangerous as she gets older. More and more, you start to see her parent's parenting style, of how kids should not be coddled, and experience life at the fullest, letting them get hurt, and needing to deal with it on their own. You also begin to see how messed up the parents really are, not just in their parenting style, but the fact that they are constantly running from the law, can't keep a job, her dad is an alcoholic, and her mom is delusional, and likes to deny things.
Walls also uses a lot of imagery, when she describes specific places that were important in the events she talks about, or when she is describing what a person looks like. This is imagery is one of the only things that Jeanette uses to go into more depth about what it was really like in her experiences.
Your comments about the voice or even the tone of this narrator towards her life are really insightful. You're right: I think a lot of the time a memoirist's job is really just to get out of the way of the story. Just tell it like it is and allow the reader to make their own judgments. It's the reader that gets to say, "Her parents are crazy!" and it's so much more fun that way.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's important to realize that she tells the story in a linear order, except for the snippet in the beginning. Yes, she alludes to later events, but she never talks about them full out. So you get a sense of progression, but also a sense of relection.
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