Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Dear Literary Loves,
Well fellow book lovers, it's quite hard waiting to hear from publishers and literary agents.  Publishers can take forever to review your work I now realize and literary agents only appear to jump into action when there is a deal involving multiple dollar signs as well as your author name attached to it.  Seriously.  Next, I got royally ticked off that my favorite Braves player, Jason Heyward, was hit in the face by a pitcher from the Mets.  The pitch hit Jason in the face and shattered his jaw.  I was so fuming mad the pitcher wasn't suspended I wrote the MLB commissioner.  Never had any use for the Yankees, Mets, or Nationals and still don't to this day.  Finally, my Amazon book order arrived.  Everybody and their mother has been asking me about my thoughts on this one memoir entitled The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.  I had never read it, but most people know I have a rather eccentric family and also wondered what did I think about her recollections of growing up in poverty.  So the first book I pulled from the box was indeed The Glass Castle and here's what I think:
There were several folks who asked me if I thought Ms. Walls had embellished the memoir.  For the most part, I don't think so.  Why?  Because I've come across people who live exactly like her family lived and I have seen people who suffer from the afflictions of alcohol abuse and mental illness which obviously was a factor with both her parents.  I have to admit, there were times when I wondered how in the hell some of this happened.  For instance, when the family was driving in the desert and Jeannette fell out of the car and her father kept on driving.  She lay beside some railroad tracks for a while before they finally came back to get her.  Or the time the police drove up with her parents in the backseat and the neighbors had called to alert police that kids were firing shots at one another from their residence.  I mean, I think the police would have arrested the parents for possessing a firearm that was left openly available to kids.   And even after finishing the book I still wonder how in creation family and children's services never took the kids away from her parents.  I know they liked to do the "skedaddle", but seriously? 
It's a wonder all four kids survived their childhoods in this family.  And you know I would not want to be the instructor from Barnard that questioned what on earth Ms. Walls knew about abject poverty and homelessness; don't you know that woman feels like an idiot now that this book has been published and has done so well?!  I have learned that you can never really know what someone's reality is unless you've walked in their shoes over the course of their lives.  One time I had a student at a private school tell me he didn't have his homework because the maid threw it in the garbage before he could finish his homework and clean up his room.  She had told him explicitly that she was going in with a trash bag and clearing his room so whatever was left out was going to be demolished.  I thought he was kidding.  I called his house to inquire with his mom.  Guess what?  Yes, the family did have a maid and yes, she had thrown away a bunch of paperwork.  Just goes to show that sometimes your assumptions about people can be dead wrong. 
All in all, I liked this memoir.  The opening sentence grabbed me and I liked the short succinct chapters.  I did not read the book in one sitting.  There were times I got so mad at her mom or dad and their irresponsible, selfish parenting that I had to put the book aside and take a break from reading it.  On the whole, what depresses me most is that I have yet to find a agent who can tackle my eccentric family and all their ordeals which I openly write about in a memoir.  Have we gotten to the point where agents are avoiding some of the tough issues in society?  Have we become a population that just wants to read about vampires and werewolves?  Is anyone still open to the human experience and the whole mystery and enlightenment it provides?  I recently read on a literary agent's site that she wanted good nonfiction narratives, but not ones that included cancer, addiction, asinine husbands, and women trying to get back their groove.  Hell woman, I thought to myself, you don't want to read about the human experience then, you just want to read about a perfect reality that doesn't exist.  Call me in ten years and I'll bet you will have changed your tune.  Why?  Because DRAMA SELLS.