Accessrx

Just in time for the approaching Holiday season, we bring you one of the finest documents of dysfunctional family life in recent years.  Published in 2005, The Glass Castle spent a remarkable 100 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list which shows just how well loved Walls’ memoir has become.  Though the events of the story threaten to paint her eclectic parents in a less than favorable light, it is Walls’ sympathetic, non-judgmental tone despite everything she endured that makes this book so unique.  A review, from Booklist:

Walls, who spent years trying to hide her childhood experiences, allows the story to spill out in this remarkable recollection of growing up - accessrx.From her current perspective as a contributor to MSNBC online, she remembers the poverty, hunger, jokes, and bullying she and her siblings endured, and she looks back at her parents: her flighty, self-indulgent mother, a Pollyanna unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenting, and her father, troubled, brilliant Rex, whose ability to turn his family’s downward-spiraling circumstances into adventures allowed his children to excuse his imperfections until they grew old enough to understand what he had done to them—and to himself; accessrx.His grand plans to build a home for the family never evolved: the hole for the foundation of the “The Glass Castle accessrx,” as the dream house was called, became the family garbage dump, and, of course, a metaphor for Rex Walls’ life. Accessrx: shocking, sad, and occasionally bitter, this gracefully written account speaks candidly, yet with surprising affection, about parents and about the strength of family ties—for both good and ill.

Please join us to discuss this moving memoir on Tuesday, November 24 at 8pm at Molly Malone’s (The Snug) in Forest Park.If you need to pick up a copy of the book accessrx, just stop by Oak Park Public Library’s second floor Adult and Teen Services desk with your OPPL library card and we’ll set you up.