Book Review: Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

I'm enrolled in a literature class at a nearby university on autobiography. And I love it. My professor is so engaging, and his class is wonderful. He has selected absolutely perfect texts to really give us a feel for autobiography theory and how to address it in the current literary world.

And his class makes me want to start a book club. But I don't know where to begin! My best friend is a fellow English major graduate, but we are both very busy. Sometimes I think, maybe after I graduate. But, the truth is, she's too busy too, and she's not in grad school. She has four children and works part time. So there really isn't time. And who else do you start a book club with, except for your best friend who also happens to love books?

No, no...there just isn't time.

But I still love reading, and this class has inspired me to start reading for pleasure again. And it's provided me with several authors to peruse! I thought I'd start by chronicling them here. Maybe that will give me the book club without the club.

So, we just finished reading Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls for my class. And I loved it. Jeannette Walls is also the author of bestselling The Glass Castle, which I somehow missed with all the hype. When it was very popular, and there were months-long waiting lists at the libraries to check it out, I was actually working at a library in Los Angeles. I never bothered finding out what it was about, but was disgusted at the hysteria surrounding the book. I had been to my mother-in-law's book club a few times before I began work, and was less than impressed with the book selection, which wasn't exactly literary. If this is what book clubs were reading, count me out! (As an aside; I don't think her book club ever read it.) However, I am now determined to read it. That's how impressed I was with this book.

I promise to not give away any endings or surprises, so don't worry. But I was very impressed. Walls classifies it as a "true life novel" because it's written in first person, but she is retelling the story of her grandmother's life and had to fill in a number of details. She verified what she could, being a dutiful journalist, but still fabricated enough to put it together. It starts with Lily (her grandmother) as a child on a ranch in Texas and follows her through to the birth of the author. She handles a lot of abstract ideas through the course of the novel, but it is always done through the narrative; there are never dull moments of theorizing on the ways of the world. She makese it clear enough; she has a number of profound one-liners. She says "I hadn't been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anywhat. It didn't really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me" (113). The entire text is littered with aphorisms like this one, all based on lessons her grandmother presumably learned through her life of hard work.

Additionally, it reads very much like a life history (because it's based on one) and for those of us who live in the West, it's a history that sounds like it could have been our own ancestors. I have ancestors from San Antonio and Colorado, both places this narrative could have taken place in (even though it didn't). While I don't know if any of them were ranchers per say, it's hard to imagine at that time that they weren't. For me, it was like reading a slice of what my family history might be.

The best part of this book, for me, honestly is that I can recommend it without caveat to my mother. My mother loves to read, but often doesn't know what to read, and I'd never categorize her tastes as especially literary. But, she likes a good story and likes clean books. This book, in my opinion, meets both of those criteria. The foul language is very limited, and there isn't a single "F" word. There are no graphic sex scenes (but, that makes sense. Can you imagine writing about your grandmother's sex life? I think not) and the characters are basically good people. If you need a book to recommend to your mother, this is a good one.