time for an update

One of the great things about my trip to Chicago was the "down" time I had at the airport and on the plane to read. It had been a long time since I was actually reading something, but I was determined to get involved with a book on this trip.

I selected The Glass Castle, the memoir by Jeannette Walls and a gift from my friends Jimmy and Barbara for my birthday a couple of years ago. What a great choice! It is one of those stories that, had it been fiction, would have been challenged as so utterly implausible. But as they say about truth... It is remarkable both for its story and the way the story is told. Perhaps because Jeannette wrote this from the vantage point of her adult life 180 degrees removed from her childhood knowing that all would be well, I never once felt despair for the children in this book (though I confess I grieved for the father). For all its tragedy, it is full of the ingredients that make the best kind of story: pain, humor, compassion, love, wisdom, triumph, trust, awakening, disappointment, perseverence, forgiveness...

I read somewhere that a movie is in the works for this story, though frankly I think it would be difficult to translate well the perspective of the author to the screen. That remains to be seen. In the meantime I commend this book to one and all (and Kip, especially to you, who enjoys nonfiction!). To enter The Glass Castle is to travel with this family and explore a world we would likely never encounter on our own. That is one of the greatest gifts of story.