The Glass Castle

I loved Jeanette Walls honest and raw telling of her father’s mental illness and her mother’s unorthodox mothering and the impact they both had on her childhood and adulthood. People with mental illness are often portrayed as villains with no redeeming qualities.

Still, Walls finds the bits and pieces of her father that are beautiful, made her childhood sometimes magical, and led to her own successful career and life. 

This memoir took me into a life that was not my own and yet was brimming with countless sights and sounds I knew deep in my bones. Walls speaks with vivid lyricism and unmistakable love for both of her dysfunctional parents throughout a childhood of vagabond-like chaos. (The title is derived from the imaginative but unfulfilled promise of an alcoholic father.)

Though the resilient author eventually makes a name for herself as a writer in New York, an encounter with her mother, now homeless on a city street, serves as the impetus for the earnest examination of their family history,… show more.

This is quite possibly my favourite memoir ever written. It made me laugh, cry and scream. Never have I seen such a clearly dysfunctional family that didn’t even realize they were dysfunctional.

I loved them because they embraced life no matter what and hated them because they didn’t see how bad what they were doing to one another was. Full of elements and emotions from my own childhood, this book made me feel deeply and emotionally.  

The fact that this book is a memoir makes it more amazing than a work of fiction.

The writer, Jeannette Walls, has so much more at stake in this story because it’s about her family, her childhood, and her parents. Her life. I raced through the book, from the first page, with my mouth open in almost disbelief because the level of neglect that Jeannette’s parents floated around in was astounding.

The story of childhood should not be so suspenseful, but Jeannette tells her realities so casually; her experience was truly like a frog in a pot of warming water,… show more.

Reading this book left me shocked and heartbroken at how people can be oblivious to how their unconventional parenting and unstable lifestyle affect their children.

I saw firsthand how poverty and turmoil created fearful, insecure children, who like me, were afraid to create new relationships or bonds with outsiders, knowing like they did, that if I got too close, my family or circumstances would embarrass me. Like the protagonist, I had to settle for loneliness.

I saw that her parents weren’t bad, just flawed. A major revelation for me. I saw that I was not alone and that there were… show more.

Ok, this was a re-read. That just shows how amazing the story is. I only re-read books that are truly compelling and have great writing, and I’ve re-read this book three times. I first encountered Jeannette Walls at a writing conference.

I thought: “If she can write as well as she speaks, I’m in.” She does. I love books with excellent writing and not-to-be-forgotten stories.

Since I read so many books a year, only the best ones rise to the top of my memory. I can remember exact scenes from Jeannette’s book year after year.

I love this book because, although it tells a difficult story of growing up in extreme poverty in rural America, it is written in prose that is sparing and unsentimental.

It is clear that – like me – Jeannette was desperate to love her parents, Rex and Rose Mary, despite their failings, but found this increasingly difficult as she became older and more conscious of the differences between her life and the lives of other children.

In the end, again like me, Jeanette had to run away from her parents to create a more stable and caring future.

Walls tells the truth. Just her mom’s advice to, “What do I tell people?”—an ache of a question that’s twisted my own writer’s stomach.

I felt my own family shame as Walls found her mom dumpster diving in the East Village, triggering her escape back to her Park Avenue apartment. And the love that landed them together for Chinese food soon after. Her father, brilliant and inhumane, became a mirror for the contradictions inherent in my family, in us all.

She sets us down smack in the middle of the desert and the Appalachians by engaging all our senses. Writing… show more.

The Glass Castle was a revelation to me; the first book to boldly chronicle the layers of madness in one family and the pivots from illusions of grandeur to poverty and food insecurity.

I instantly connected with the honesty and bravery of Walls’ story as she introduces readers to her chaos-ridden childhood, including public displays of bizarre behavior and parental failures. Holding out hope for normalcy, Walls tells the story of a broken, nomadic family “skedaddling” from one trauma/drama to another. 

The Glass Castle is a raw, compelling treasure, demonstrating the potential for resiliency despite a childhood of poverty, shame,… show more.

The opening scene is one of the best you will ever read in the memoir genre. It serves as the catalyst for a hair-raising account of a chaotic, nomadic lifestyle where food and money are in short supply, midnight flits are frequent, but dreams are free.

Despite the inevitable disappointments and dangers associated with feckless, inadequate parenting, a strange kind of love and eventual acceptance propels the narrator and her siblings to break free and seek a more secure adulthood for themselves.  

This book has a special place in my heart because it taught me so much about writing craft,… show more.