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The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780743247535 
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Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
Review:
"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." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Jeannette Walls has carved a story with precision and grace out of one of the most chaotic, heartbreaking childhoods ever to be set down on the page. This deeply affecting memoir is a triumph in every possible way, and it does what all good books should: it affirms our faith in the human spirit." Dani Shapiro, author of Family History
Review:
"The Glass Castle is the saga of the restless, indomitable Walls family, led by a grand eccentric and his tempestuous artist wife. Jeannette Walls has survived poverty, fires, and near starvation to triumph. She has written this amazing tale with honesty and love." Patricia Bosworth, author of Anything Your Little Heart Desires and Diane Arbus: A Biography
Review:
"Just read the first pages of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and I defy you not to go on. It's funny and sad and quirky and loving. I was incredibly touched by it." Dominick Dunne, author of The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper
Synopsis:
In the tradition of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shouting, Jeannette Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family.
Special Features:
About the Author
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
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wmcarmichael, April 24, 2007 (view all comments by wmcarmichael)
Such an amazing story of such hard times, and the focus of a child, I loved reading this book!
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Rosalie, March 2, 2007 (view all comments by Rosalie)
Challenging circumstances were no match for this author's extraordinary courage to do much more than just survive. If memories of hardships include having to eat your vegetables, reading The Glass Castle could well change the rest of your life.
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ERoberts, January 28, 2007 (view all comments by ERoberts)
"Jeannette Walls's father always called her 'Mountain Goat' and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls' childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover." --Brangien Davis, Amazon.com
Love the book... I highly recommend it!
View all 4 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780743247535
- Subtitle:
- A Memoir
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Scribner Book Company
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- Dysfunctional Families
- Subject:
- Adult Children of Alcoholics
- Subject:
- Homeless persons
- Subject:
- Entertainment & Performing Arts - Television Personalities
- Subject:
- Poor
- Subject:
- Childhood Memoir
- Subject:
- Personal Memoirs
- Copyright:
- 2005
- Publication Date:
- March 2005
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 304
- Dimensions:
- 9.48x6.32x1.09 in. 1.21 lbs.
