The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Scribner Classics)

This was such a great book! The author reads the audiobook, which I usually prefer. It tells a very detailed story of a horrific childhood riddled with abuse and neglect, but also with love and compassion. A family not so "normal" by usual standards and the triumph of her and her sister and siblings getting away from their parents to start a life of their own, while learning to accept their parents choice to remain unhoused, and unemployed. Great book, great reading. In the same theme of Educated, and A well-trained Wife; with it's own unique journey, not about religion but similar family dynamics and a very controlling father. Would recommend 10/10!

Plot/Storyline: 5 Stars Jeannette Walls' story of childhood abuse is an original one in that, while disturbing, it was not as horrific as some I have read. For this reason, it was a more enjoyable read than I expected, although still very interesting. Ms. Walls manages to tell of her childhood in a way that is casual about the neglect, much as she seemed to have felt when she was a child. Amazingly, there were very few moments of self-pity. Unlike a lot of memoirs depicting bad childhoods, this one did not appear to be trying to constantly shock the reader. Instead, it just told the story honestly and completely. The reader is left with many questions regarding her parents' motives. This is not a bad aspect of the book, as it is a reality that she probably cannot fathom their reasoning for most things. My biggest wonder was how her mother was able to obtain a teaching degree, yet seemed to be unable or unwilling to hold a job for more than a few months at a time. Her father was not such an enigma as he was merely an alcoholic. This was a memoir well worth reading. I had trouble putting it down as I wanted to find out how Ms. Walls managed to rise above such a quagmire of a childhood. Character Development: 5 Stars As I stated above, there were very few instances of Ms. Walls delving into self-pity. She did manage, however, to convey her thoughts and feelings on her upbringing. Moreover, she told the story in a progressive manner that made the reader feel similar to how she must have felt at different ages. For instance, as a very young girl, the times of hunger, almost starvation, did not seem to bother her as much as when she was older. The antics of her parents were a source of humor rather than embarrassment, until she was old enough to notice the differences between her family and others. Her brother, the sibling she was closest to, was the most well developed, but her older sister was well done, also. Her parents were as much of an enigma to the reader as they were to her. Her younger sister did not seem to play much of a role in her life, and, therefore, was only peripherally in the book. Writing Style: 5 Stars In a word: Excellent. The story flowed very evenly. The viewpoint matured as little Jeannette matured in the book. The dialogue, while I cannot vouch for it being verbatim, very well could have been, as I could hear her family talking as I read. Her descriptions were those of an adult, but this was not offputting in the earlier chapters. It merely made for a better read. Formatting/Editing: 5 Stars Both were of professional quality. Rating: PG-13 for hints of Child Molestation, Light Language, Alcoholism

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, an emotionally gripping story of the major events and day-to-day struggles of the narrator, is a stunning read. It has earned both a Christopher Award and a New York Times Notable Book award and was the #1 New York Times Bestseller for 3 years. The author has also written titles such as Half Broke Horses and The Silver Star. Jeannette Walls is the second-oldest child of 4, with the oldest being a girl named Lori, the youngest below Jeannette a boy named Brian, and the absolute youngest a girl named Maureen. Her mother’s name is Rose Mary Walls and her fathers’ was Rex Walls. The memoir begins not with the start of her life, but with a memory of her mother and her sitting and eating in a restaurant when she was an adult. It establishes an important baseline for her relationship with her mother throughout the book, and also sets up what kind of person her mother is for the reader. From there, the book continues on about her life as a young girl and the various different places she and her family travel to as she grows older. It features such sites as Battle Mountain, Phoenix, and other locations, and all throughout this bout of traveling, the interactions between the characters establish their various personalities and ideals. Her father is an intelligent, ambitious man with eccentric tendencies and grand plans for continuing their adventures. He teaches her much about math, science, the stars, and all the while still fulfilling the role of a caring father. Her mother is an aspiring artist and writer, and wherever they travel, whole rooms and a multitude of materials are dedicated to her mother practicing her craft. Brian is an athletic boy, always out playing and roughing it up in all the new places they frequently travel to. Lori is the typical intelligent bookworm, only occasionally venturing outside to play and normally stuck reading a book inside on a comfortable perch. Maureen is only a young baby for most of the book, and so I’ll not go into detail about her. It quickly becomes apparent to the reader, though, that her family is, to put it simply, heavily dysfunctional. For all her father’s brilliance, grand plans of adventure for the family, and everything he taught Jeannette, he was a severe drinker, and it wasn't uncommon for him to be gone for hours at a time, getting absolutely pickled and only stumbling home when he was retrieved by his family or managed the walk there. Her mother, in spite of loving her children, tended to place her own wants and desires above theirs were her art or literary career concerned, like the time she kept refusing to go to her job at their local school unless forced to by her kids. She also held out of the ordinary beliefs, and this governed the way she raised her kids. The chief example of this is when, as a very young child, she was being treated at a hospital for severe burns after spilling boiling water over herself at home. After a few weeks spent at the hospital, getting her burn wounds healed, her family broke her out of the hospital, with her mother herself suggesting that they should’ve just taken her to a local Native American witch doctor.

I loved this book. It reminded me a lot of my own childhood in certain ways. It really feels like a Kristin Hannah story. 10/10

Jeannette Walls was raised by parents who did not make economic security for the family a priority. Her father was an engineer and quick to share his intelligence with his children. He could fix most engines and knew the names of the stars and planets. He was also a hopeless alcoholic, spending his paycheck on booze and leaving everyone’s stomachs empty. Her mother was an artist and writer who never sold a painting or a book. She made no money except when Walls and her siblings pleaded with her to be a teacher—a job she could never hold down because she didn’t like showing up. Her parents were irresponsible, and throughout her entire childhood, Jeannette and her siblings never knew stability. When they lived in California, they camped in the desert and worried for water. When they lived in Arizona, they lived in a house filled with cockroaches that had no locks on the doors. When they lived in West Virginia, winter froze the water, rainstorms poured through holes in the roof, and a mudslide carried the front steps away. There were many instances when, without warning, their father would disappear for a few days, or their mother would refuse to get out of bed, or they wouldn’t have anything to eat. What is captivating is that despite her poor circumstances, Walls developed and maintained a strong internal sense of responsibility (so did her three siblings). If her parents weren’t going to take care of her, then she was going to have to take care of herself, and she started learning early. She taught herself how to cook and do household chores, she made her own braces, she fought off a bigger kid who wanted to rape her, and she learned how to manage the little money that they did have. She developed a spirit of resourcefulness throughout the book that led to her paying her way through college with scholarships and part-time jobs and eventually becoming a published author. The book is well written. It moves at a great pace and kept my attention from cover to cover. I enjoyed her voice as narrator and enjoyed getting to know each member of her family intimately through her eyes. It was beautiful to see her question her circumstances and slowly come to recognize that she both loved her parents for their kindness and intelligence and hated them for their abuse and neglect. Her stories have the full range of human emotion infused into them and are equal parts heartfelt and entertaining. At the end of the book, the kids are all adults and living in New York City. Their parents are living in the city too and are voluntarily homeless. Walls and each of her siblings relates to their parents in different ways, much reflective of each of our own complicated family dynamics. If this book had a message it would be: You can’t choose your family, but you can choose how much responsibility you take for yourself.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about Jeannette’s life from the time she was three years old, to her adult life. Jeannette faces many challenges growing up, financially and socially. The Walls family moves around many times throughout Jeannette’s life. They were always on the run. The Walls family spent the most amount of time in Battle Mountain, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Welch, West Virginia, and New York City. The Walls family consists of Rex and Rose Mary Walls, and their four children: Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary rose their kids to believe that life was one adventure after the next and that they should always be open to the new opportunities life has for them. Jeannette was undoubtedly the most adventurous of the children. She looked up to her father’s positive mindset and wanted to be just like him, despite his alcohol addiction. Rex’s alcoholism created more and more financial trouble for the family as the children grew up. When Rex was sober, however, he encouraged his family to the best they could be every day and to live life to the fullest: and that’s exactly what they did. Living life to the fullest is integrated subtly throughout the story along with the theme of family obligation. In part II of The Glass Castle, Jeannette talks about how her mother, Rose Mary, would often take the kids to Sunday mass and occasionally Rex would tag along. Jeannette explains that Rex was an atheist and often challenged the priest during the sermon. The rest of the church was always appalled by the behavior of this man, but Rose Mary would simply say “Don’t worry, God understand. He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.” Rose Mary and the kids knew that no matter how much Rex drank, swore, or broke things, they had an obligation to remain loyal to him as his family. While The Glass Castle is a hefty book, it’s really a quick read. A story like Jeannette’s completely envelopes the reader and makes reading a book feel like watching a movie. Jeannette has a fantastic writing style and reveals what her life growing up was actually like. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette touches on emotional subjects such as loss, alcoholism, rape, abuse, and molestation. One of the first (of many) scenes in The Glass Castle that made me cry was in the very beginning of the memoir when the Walls family packed up to move from a southern Arizona town. The family piled in the car and were on the road when Quixote, the Walls family cat, was growling and meowing about being shoved in the car. Rex Walls’ response was simple. He told his family that any who wasn’t up for an adventure wasn’t welcome. With that, he tossed poor Quixote out the window and kept on driving. Rex and Rose Mary raised their kids to be tough and to never become attached to anything. Jeannette’s parents definitely had a unique parenting style. However, I appreciate that Rex and Rose Mary always reminded their kids to do their own thing without fearing judgement. In one particular part of the book, the Walls kids were swimming and playing in a public fountain. When people started to stare, Rose Mary Walls simply yelled “mind your own beeswax.” then turned to Jeanette and said “Ignore the fuddy­duddies!" I think any parent who preaches self expression is quite admirable. The Glass Castle is a book for readers of any level and will make every reader walk away feeling differently and seeing the world through a new lens.

Life writing is not exactly my favorite genre, but this book was selected by my book club and so I dutifully read it. Two things surprised me about it: firstly, it was an incredibly fast read (I sped through the first hundred pages while juggling a million other things), and secondly, it was really well-written. The reason I avoid this genre is that most people's life stories are written with an eye to provoking our emotions in the basest possible way. They manipulate us into feeling angry, or sympathetic, or inspired, but whatever the intended output, I almost always feel as though I'm being conned into feelings that are manufactured rather than natural. The great strength of Walls's account, by contrast, is that she shows remarkable restraint in telling this story without any of those emotional manipulations. Indeed, she goes out of her way to present the past through the eyes of her younger self, justifying the behavior of her parents in the same manner as she had done during the original experience. There can be no doubt that the Walls parents were abusive and neglectful, shifting the family from town to town in a spiral of increasing poverty and desperation. Juxtaposed to this, however, is the sense that they were also geniuses in their own way: their father Rex Walls repeatedly shows his skills in science, mathematics, and mechanics, while their mother Rose Mary is a seemingly talented but out-of-touch artist. Jeanette Walls does a remarkable job of showing these two starkly contrasting characters and how circumstances slowly swallow up their good qualities. For most people, this book will hit all the right notes, but I wanted a little bit more in terms of pushing the limits of the genre. There are moments, for instance, where Walls wants to blur the line between literature and biography, such as the scene where her young self wants to replant a Joshua tree so that it will flourish: "One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. 'You'd be destroying what makes it special,' she said. 'It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.'" In moments like these, I started to wish that Walls would push this strategy further by playing with her narrative voice a little, undermining its authority to some extent rather than building so insistently into the person she would become as an adult. There was no need to push such experimentation as far as, say, Chuck Barris's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography , but it is the nature of subjective writing to account for the teller's inherent biases and the unreliability of memory and I would have liked to see some acknowledgment of that fact. Overall, however, I think this is a very well-written and interesting life story that mostly deserves the glowing accolades it has garnered so far.

"The Glass Castle" is a moving memoir written under the so-called creative nonfiction genre. Jeannette Walls' life struggle from poverty up to the time she became a journalist is a story of - as the back cover of the book puts it - resilience and redemption. Walls is a brilliant writer who was able to assemble vividly her bittersweet childhood memories - with a pair of dysfunctional parents - in a wonderfully-written and inspiring book. With a father who hated to be tied to any permanent job and a mother who abhorred domesticity and obsessed with her dream to become an accomplished artist, the Walls family had been moving from one place to another until they settled a bit longer in a coal-mining town of Welch in West Virginia where Jeannette became the editor-in-chief of a high-school newspaper. The saving grace is that all the while, her father and mother, who both wanted to live free-wheeling lives, taught them the right values - but which could be twisted at times to suit their needs - and to face life fearlessly. One of the positive values their parents had taught them was to live they way they want and not be bothered by what other people or society would think about them. It's a value that their parents had kept - they remained homeless street scavengers when the followed their children in New York. This is illustrated in a scene when Jeannette offered to help her mother and arranged to meet her in a New York restaurant. "You want to help me change my life?" Mom asked. "I'm fine. You're the one who needs help. Your values are all confused." "Mom, I saw you picking through trash in the East Village a few days ago." "Well people in this country are too wasteful. It's my way of recycling," she took her bite of her Seafood Delight. "Why didn't you say hello?" "I am so ashamed Mom. I hid." Mom pointed her chopsticks at me. "You see?" she said. "Right there. That's exactly what I am saying. You're way too easily embarrassed. Your father and I are who we are. Accept it." "What am I supposed to tell people about my parents?" "Just tell the truth," Mom said. "That's simple enough." The fact that Jeannette Walls did not capitalize on the trauma of her childhood and instead paint the rosy side of her life is a testament to her bright outlook and strength of character. That and a dash of luck turned her into a successul writer. The memoir is a heartbreaking tale of survival and dreams with plenty of humor strewn along the way. I highly recommend this book. It's a good read. It can provide one a sense of triumph in this dystopian world.