2 Heartfelt Memoirs that Will Tear You Up Inside

by Rachel Toalson | Books

Today I’d like to share with you two heartfelt memoirs that will make you feel every emotion humanly possible.

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls is sort of a classic in the memoir genre. It’s highly regarded on every list of best memoirs to read. I had never read it myself, but once I did, I understood completely why it’s there.

This story was incredibly heartbreaking. Walls and her brother and sisters grew up devastatingly poor and were the children of neglectful parents. They didn’t really know any of that at the time, of course, not until they were older, but they had hints of it in their childhood. What stood out most about this fact and about the book in general was that Walls told the whole, brutal truth about her parents’ inability to care for her and her siblings, but she did it all in love. No matter how awful the situation was, she approached it with grace. This is the power of writing a memoir years removed from the experience.

Rex and Rose Mary Walls moved their children around, always chasing the next unlikely dream Rex had in his heart. Rose Mary often left the kids to themselves while she painted, chasing her own unlikely dream. Sometimes the family didn’t have anything to eat but butter, because neither parent worked. Rex was a brilliant man with a brilliant imagination, and he mostly made life fun, when he wasn’t drunk. Rose Mary could not bear the responsibility of providing for her family, and because Rex was always chasing his next big dream, the family didn’t often have money for anything. But Rex and Rose Mary were also too proud to get government help. It was a very tragic situation for the children.

At times this book was so very sad—because while you felt angry at the parents for not really taking responsibility the way they should have, it was also obvious how much they loved their children—especially Rex.

Walls has a poetic style of writing that made the story that much more enjoyable. I was never once bored, because she has such a gift for capturing a moment and creating three-dimensional characters that you could not help but love, even while you hated. It was excruciating to read about the poverty they lived through with such parents. I was poor as a child, but I was not that poor.

What I liked most about this book is that Walls also showed how she and her siblings escaped the toxic situation with her parents. They broke free of their parents’ grip, which raised the question: would they have been so persistent and determined if they hadn’t lived through these circumstances? It’s impossible to tell.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from The Glass Castle, which showcases the kind of poverty Walls lived in:

“We called the kitchen the loose-juice room, because on the rare occasions that we had paid the electricity bill and had power, we’d get a wicked electric shock if we touched any damp or metallic surface in the room. The first time I got zapped, it knocked my breath out and left me twitching on the floor. We quickly learned that whenever we ventured into the kitchen, we needed to wrap our hands in the driest socks or rags we could find. If we got a shock, we’d announce it to everyone else, sort of like giving a weather report. “Big jolt from touching the stove today,” we’d say. “Wear extra rags.”

The second memoir I recently finished was A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, by Sue Klebold. If you don’t recognize this name, Klebod is the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold. The Columbine shooting was the most violent school shooting in the history of the United States and happened on April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado.

This book was only recently published, and it’s been on my list for a while. This is the first time Klebold has broken her silence about her son, at least in written form, and this book was a beautiful offering to the public.

I truly cannot say enough about it. In A Mother’s Reckoning, Klebold takes readers by the hand and walks them through what life was like with Dylan. It might surprise you to know that he was mostly a regular kid. He didn’t get in much trouble, didn’t cause much trouble, didn’t require much in the ways of discipline and redirection. In the days after the Columbine shooting, there was a lot reported about Klebold and her husband—how they’d been terrible parents, how Dylan must have been abused because that’s the only reason someone would want to go on a killing spree, how this could never happen to good parents. But Klebold’s book proves that this could happen to any of us.

The Klebolds were a family that sat around a dinner table and talked about their days. I do this every day with my family. They supported each other in their school and work functions. My family does this, too. They loved each other. Of course every family does.
Klebold had no idea, until after the tragedy, that her son was severely depressed. So her book is mostly an entreaty for parents—to look hard for the signs of depression. To pay attention. To find the places where our children are hurting and try to heal them with professional help, if need be.

A Mother’s Reckoning was a love poem, a memoir, a valuable offering to a public that has wondered about what went wrong in the homes of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Klebold shares candidly and honestly, and nothing she writes is without grace and honor and love. She does not make excuses for her son, but she writes so that she can raise awareness about brain health disorders and equip parents to recognize it, accept it and do something about it. This is a book I think every parent should read, without exception.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to visit my recommendation page if you’re interested in seeing some of my best book recommendations. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And, if you’re looking for some new books to read, stop by my starter library, where you can get a handful of my books for free.

*The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to them, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them.