Putting food on the table is not the top priority for Rex and Rose Mary, and they can’t quite understand how they got to be lumped with such a responsibility. They live in abject poverty and the children are frequently hungry, dumpster-diving for discarded items, and eating cat food more than once. Neither accept a penny of charity or government assistance, and both are some of the most astoundingly narcissist characters – people – I’ve ever read about. Rex is a habitual drunk and chain smoker, and Rose Mary is trained as a teacher but prefers to spend her days pursuing her art. Rex and Rose Mary determine that their family will live a nomadic lifestyle, ‘doing the skedaddle’ when things go south, and pitching up in another American small-town nowhere. It is so harrowing and dark, and yet told with a levity and a compassion that makes it easier to read that it would otherwise be. It’s astonishing because I’ve never read a memoir quite like it. Raised – and ‘raised’ is being generous to her parents – by eccentric nonconformists Rex and Rose Mary, Jeannette and her three siblings have a pretty astonishing story to tell. Jeannette Walls’ first memory is sustaining third-degree burns as she attempted to boil hot dogs on the stove – at age three.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |