The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls’s novel The Silver Star is a coming of age story that piggybacks on themes covered in the author’s memoir, The Glass Castle. These include the struggles of childhood, particularly as they relate to girls, as well as how growing up in an unstable home environment can affect, not only the way they see the world, but also the way they learn to cope within it as well.

The story told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Bean, is set in 1970s California. Bean lives with her fifteen-year-old sister, Liz, and their somewhat mentally challenged mother, Charlotte. Early in the novel, Charlotte picks up and heads back to her hometown, leaving her girls. Her motives are surprisingly self-centered as she wishes to “make some time and space for herself.” Her daughters are forced to find their way to their mother’s ancestral home where their uncle Tinsley has been living for some time.

Charlotte’s hometown, Byler, is not what one would consider a modern, hip town. One writer describes it as the town “where the ’60s never happened.” There is no sense of urgency or purpose as the citizens move from one place to the other at a glacial pace. The town mill, once a prominent fixture in Byler, is no longer the successful enterprise it once was. Uncle Tinsley has tasked himself – albeit unsuccessfully – with maintaining the family legacy by keeping the mill operational. Tinsley has a fervent desire to keep the family history alive, despite his many eccentricities. Charlotte seems to share this sentiment in her own haphazard, unhealthy way.



The girls, however, are not as connected to the past as their mother and uncle. They choose to live life in the present, mostly because they have to. Much of their childhood has been spent moving from one place to the next, almost without reason or purpose. From Venice Beach to Pasadena, the girls have been subjected to their mother’s whims, never having the good fortune of a stable upbringing. So, it stands to reason that the girls give no thought to finding their own way to Byler after their mother departs without them.

Eventually, Bean acclimates to her new environment, having “gone native.” However, family life continues to be far from harmonious. Charlotte’s constant comings and goings continue to put a strain on the two girls. Liz, in particular, is less enamored with her new hometown than her sister. She is the more sophisticated, less bold sibling; her mother’s erratic behavior and pending court case due to an assault charge is almost too much for her to handle. With alacrity, the author conveys the fragile emotional stage of adolescent children. She chooses to narrate the story from the children’s perspective; this point of view provides a very different perspective to the reader than an adult narrator might.

Bean is of particular interest; through her eyes, the reader encounters the 1970s era in which the book is set. The ubiquitous events of this time period fade into the background for the young girl who seems more fixated on the minutia of the time. Wells uses things such as “chicken potpies, Tab, a car’s push-in lighter” to ground the story – and consequentially the reader – in the time period. Because of these everyday staples, Bean is able to make Byler a place where she can feel the most like herself. Liz however, has a harder time.



Through Bean and Liz, the author conveys a child’s uncanny ability to survive a chaotic childhood. They develop certain survival instincts that help them cope. The two sisters are forced to find ways of dealing with their mother’s unstable lifestyle. As one critic puts it, “When you’re raised by maniacs, you learn to pay attention.”

There is also an intriguing dynamic between the two girls and members of their family. Along with their precocious Uncle Tinsley, the author introduces other family members in short scenes that add color to the girls’ tenuous environment. There is Aunt Al who reiterates to Bean how much like her father she is even though the young girl knows very little about him. Uncle Clarence shares his wisecracks, commenting at one point that “ducks got more sense than that Supreme my-ass Court.” Wells seems to drop these brief sound bites into the story to illustrate how crazy, yet surprisingly mundane, the family is. Their presence, however, provides little more than that.

The transition from memoir to novel is an impressive feat for an author whose best work is taken from the scattered fragments of her own life. Yet, there is something genuine in Wells’s telling of life in Byler and the two girls whose lives are affected and transformed by it. Her characters might indeed be extensions of her younger self. And in the telling of The Silver Star, Wells could very well be trying to find a resolution to past pain.