The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, 2005
Amazing story of extreme poverty (growing up without indoor plumbing) & chaos (an alcoholic father) mixed with adventures (dreams of building a Glass Castle) & unconditional love (the sibling bond between Jeannette, Brian & Lori).
The ups & downs that are captured with Jeannette's magical yet destructive childhood are honestly & simply told in this gripping memoir. So many unbelievable moments where Rex & Rose Mary Walls inadvertently abused their children.
That the Walls children were able to escape is due to the love of reading that was instilled in the children, and the support of a concerned adult, that encouraged them to do well in school & that they could achieve things even if they scavenged the school restroom garbage for lunch.
How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz, 2015Story of college friends Kate Smirnoff, Anna Furry & George Leoni.
The story jumps around chronologically so was tough to follow, but set up some twists.
Kate has been mysteriously traveling the country looking to give away her inheritance. Anna is now a paralegal despite her MD. George is onto her third husband & child, constantly in need of a man to love her.
The friends have fallen out over an incident when all three lived together & an intruder attempted to force himself onto George.
We realize that the event triggers Kate's road trip & that although everyone blames Anna for the incident, there is more to it.
Engaging vignettes revolving around no-nonsense, straight talker Kate with no greater ambition than being a barista; privileged Anna who will never shake her childhood demons or the cold, distant manner her parents treat her & her brother Colin; and gorgeous park ranger George who becomes addicted to men.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. VanceMore academic than The Glass Castle, Hillbilly Elegy describes J.D.'s (or J-Dot's) upbringing in economically depraved Ohio and family reunions in Appalachian Kentucky.
Unstable families, violence & addiction plague the community. Vance sees friends checking out of good paying jobs because they are tired of getting up so early.
The mentality is not that they can make something of themselves through education and hard work, but rather that the world is stacked against them.
These people do not realize that if they attended college out of state versus community college, the tuition would most likely be lower due to financial aid. These people do not realize there is another life besides the vicious cycle of broken families and poverty prevalent in small communities left bereft when mines & factories closed.
When Vance does enter the Ivy Leagues (Yale for law school), the cultural shock is significant. He describes things he never realized growing up in small town Ohio. From social etiquette 'norms' such as wearing a suit to an interview and that fizzy water is not water that has gone 'bad' and to be spit out at a restaurant to life altering truths such as job prospects are not the same as the town he grew up in and that elite colleges have more to offer than just bragging rights.
Similar to my experience where my family rarely ate out & when we did, it was at a Chinese restaurant, I went on a date in college where I ordered a burger & the waiter asked how I would like it. Having only eater hamburgers of the McDonald's variety, I did not know how to answer this question.
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz, 2007
Picked up this book because of How to Start a Fire & the hilarious, sarcastic heroine Kate. Spellman files centers around Isabel Spellman, whose parents are detectives & proprietors of Spellman Investigations.
Based in San Francesco, Izzy lives with her parents, younger sister Rae & alcoholic Uncle Ray. Her older brother David is an attorney.
The family spies on each other & Izzy is unable to draw the line between investigating people and her personal life, leaving to many failed relationships.
When she becomes too intensely involved & investigates a cold case that her parents had been hired for decades ago, her family starts tailing her to reign her in.
Quirky and humorous, the Spellman Files is the start to a series of Spellman books that I am not compelled to read, but may pick up at some point.
