The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Title of the Book:  The Glass Castle

Author: Jeannette Walls

# of Pages: 288

Star Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review:

Jeannette starts “The Glass Castle” with her as an adult seeing her mother rooting through a New York City dumpster.  She watched as her mother excitedly found something she liked and her eyes lite up like a child.  As her mother looked up from the dumpster, Jeannette panicked and hid in the back seat of the cab she was in.  This encounter brought all her childhood back to her vivid memory.  These memories range from her father throwing her into a hot springs in Arizona to teach her to swim to her stitching her father’s arm after he got drunk and got into a fight in a bar in Virginia.  Her parents raised her and her siblings in a very untraditional way, very little public school, running from bill collectors and police and being free from society’s rules.  This book details her and her siblings childhood, their reaction and how that has shape them as adults.  

The Glass Castle is a memoir of Jeannette Walls childhood with her untraditional parents.  It details the struggles the kids must endure as a Walls child.  She, in detail, tells of her parents putting the three eldest children in the back of U-HAul and driving across the country.  The door of the U-Haul slams open and as the kids watch the road go by, they can do nothing but try to hide from the cars behind them.  This unique upbringing is what makes this both a good story and a lesson in bad parenting.  

The author is her younger self and this style portrays her emotions well. It also allows the reader into her and her sibling’s life.The tone she uses is almost positive sounding even when she talks about her father being reckless and dangerous. Her tone changes as she gets older and she starts to realize most kids have beds not made of rope and cardboard.  

The title of the book is hard to grasp throughout the book as the “Glass Castle” is a dream of her and her fathers.  This dream is never realized and it seems as if Jeannette is somehow holding onto this childhood dream while using this as a title to her memoir.  

I would recommend this book and have given it 4 stars.  The story is easy to read, it has a good emotional range from outrage to sadness to happiness, and most of all it is her story.  I think that most people with decent upbringings would enjoy this book. This book shows how you can come from dirt to a successful adult with some great stories to tell.