I loved reading this story. Considering the context, you would expect it to be painful and dark. Told through the eyes of a child (though, now she's an adult), it follows a completely disfunctional, yet loving family as they move sporadically throughout the country on the whims of their alcoholic, brilliant father and their aloof and sometimes brash mother. The children are basically forced to raise themselves, their parents' style of child-rearing being under the belief that 'if we help you, we are not teaching you to fend for yourselves'. The children suffer a whole slew of abuses, live in poverty and absolute filth from time to time yet oddly, are able to make it through the hardships of their lives and learn the lessons their parents 'intended' for them to learn. The parents' parenting is virtually non-existant yet the children look up to their parents as any normal child, living a normal life would (...sometimes). It's almost impossible to comprehend and believe this to be a memoir and not complete fiction as you read the story Jeannette Walls is telling. Eventually all 3 Walls children end up in New York and the author is looking back at the path of life that has brought the family down to where they are today (her parents living as homeless people because it's an 'adventure').
This story is as hilarious and bittersweet. It really shows that no matter what life throws at you, somehow, you can find it in yourself to get past it all, good and bad. This story definitely leaves a smile on your face after reading it.
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