It remains an oddly unsatisfying feeling

At the end of 365 pages, in an "Author's Note" reported this, they wanted to write a novel about her mother, Rosemary Smith Walls life and those they have made to the much more interesting life her grandmother Lilly Casey Smith. So a kind of biography of this grandmother has emerged that is based on the telling and assignable stations of "untamed life" of Lily Casey, the "I-Form" but the service has a novel.
Lily Casey, from the appear even more photos of the chapter beginnings of beautifully designed book by Hoffmann und Campe, has experienced .... so many different forms of life in the "Wild West", in Texas, Arizona, Chicago, that the reader hardly follow kannv - from cave dwelling on the river on various ranches with their family of origin up to the monastery boarding school, for teachers short training in Chicago, to live as a maid and a short marriage to a bigamist ....
Even as a wife and mother she begins with her family again and again, and their ideas for making money are endless - from selling moonshine liquor prior to reclassification of a hearse as school bus, from collecting bottles to poker games and - in wartime - for property speculation in Phoenix , As a teacher, she is released again from its dwarf schools because they are the children of dignitaries beaten "to teach them something (eg ethics)". It embodies a piece of the Wild West - Horse play in their lives play an important role, huge herds of cattle, later cars, and finally even takes flying lessons, all rather unusual activities for a woman in the first half of the 20th century.
And still remains a strangely unsatisfying feeling - the first-person narrator Lily knows primarily one real sense: be tough stand tall by anyone, find, fight and win their own advantage. Other experiences and feelings - the disappointment of her first husband, the grief over the suicide of her sister, the anger at the increasing alienation of her wild, rebellious daughter Rosemary - remain oddly shallow and superficial. Compassion and understanding are seldom noticeable - at least not in "I, Lily." As Rosemary such feelings is certainly, one can assume that the author adopted her mother's view of her mother and she has thus something drawn holzschnittartig- unsatisfactory. Maybe a different narrative perspective than that of the first-person narrator would have been more convincing.
In the last of the many short chapters (which are categorized into 9 sections) characterized the views of the "The Glass Castle" from: the Lily unsupported relationship of Rosemary and Rex, the rootless parents from "The Glass Castle". This first and rightly acclaimed book of the same author is much more complex and impressive than "El Cantante", possibly because it is based on the personal experiences of the author and thus on an authentic "I".
Conclusion: "An Unfinished Life" offers a vivid look at the time in the Wild West and on a competitive, strong and confident woman - but the book goes no substance or linguistically to the "The Glass Castle" approach.