Review: The Glass Castle

An account of growing up nomadic, starry-eyed, and dirt poor in the '60s and '70s, by gossip journalist Walls (Dish, 2000). From her first memory, of catching fire while boiling hotdogs by herself in the trailer park her family was passing through, to her last glimpse of her mother, picking through a New York City Dumpster, Walls's detached, direct, and unflinching account of her rags-to-riches life proves a troubling ride. Her parents, Rex Walls, from the poor mining town of Welch, West Virginia, and Rose Mary, a well-educated artist from Phoenix, love a good adventure and usually don't take into account the care of the children who keep arriving—Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen—leaving them largely to fend for themselves. For entrepreneur and drinker Rex, "Doing the skedaddle" means getting out of town fast, pursued by creditors. Rex is a dreamer, and someday his gold-digging tool (the Prospector), or, better, his ingenious ideas for energy-efficiency, will fund the building of his desert dream house, the Glass Castle. But moving from Las Vegas to San Francisco to Nevada and back to rock-bottom Welch provides a precarious existence for the kids—on-and-off schooling, living with exposed wiring and no heat or plumbing, having little or nothing to eat. Protesting their paranoia toward authority and their insistence on "true values" for their children ("What doesn't kill you will make you stronger," chirps Mom), these parents have some dubious nurturing practices, such as teaching the children to con and shoplift. The deprivations do sharpen the wits of the children—leading to the family's collective escape to New York City, where they all make good, even the parents, who are content to live homeless. The author's tell-it-like-it-was memoir is moving because it's unsentimental; she neither demonizes nor idealizes her parents, and there remains an admirable libertarian quality about them, though it justifiably elicits the children's exasperation and disgust. Walls's journalistic bare-bones style makes for a chilling, wrenching, incredible testimony of childhood neglect. A pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, thoroughly American story.

Couldn't put it down.

I am a 12-year old, but this book has been amazing and inspiring. The Glass Castle should be recommended to people of any age, as long as they are mature enough to read some inappropriate parts. When I was reading it, I couldn't believe that it was all true, and that Jeannette Walls wasn't afraid to tell her story. Thank you Jeannette Walls, for having such an exciting life, and growing up to be an author so you could write about it.
~Ava Olsen, not your average 12-year old 

This book is excellent! My sister handed it to me and said I should read it. I couldn't put it down as the author has such a naturally flowing style of writing.
After reading about Jeannette and her life, I really appreciated my up-bringing. I don't think I would have survived intact if I had had to live her life.
A must read!! 

This book was fantastic! My mom was actually the one that really bugged me about reading the book she must of talked about it for about a year before she bought it for me. I didn't want to read it originally because I was afraid it was going to be a: piety me, my childhood was so terrible, nobody Had it worse then me; type of memoir, and I just didn't want to read that. However; it's not like that at all, yes it's about Jeannette and her brother and sisters who had complete nimrods for parents, and the parents had made unbelievably terrible choices when it came to the family. What makes this book unique is the attitude that Jeannette has towards her family changes as she becomes an adult but she never relies or expects her parents to change which they don't and with that Jeannette embraces her incredibly embarrassing and deconstructive child hood as " this was me, this was how I lived, these were my parents, yeah they made terrible choices , and thy only thought of them self, but I still love them. And I think that's refreshing! Overall the book was funny, adventurous, and great read!!!!! 

The Glass castle
Jeannette Walls
The grandmas of the walls

Review: The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls was raised by an alcoholic father and a "free-spirited" mother. This book chronicles her childhood, which was traumatic and abusive by any standard (though she and her siblings saw it ... Read full review

Review: The Glass Castle

Who thought an auto-biography could be better than an author's fiction. I do now. By the way, even though many readers have referred to the author's ultimate and surprising (even shocking ... Read full review

Review: The Glass Castle

This is an awesome book, but it's painful to read. The good thing about it is the strength of Jeannette Walls and her siblings. At first they seemed like a fun but eccentric family, but as Walls got ... Read full review

Review: The Glass Castle

This was one of those books that I had put off reading because I thought it would be depressing. The author's story of a difficult childhood started off as a journey and was like watching a flower ... Read full review