The Glass Castle

Title: The Glass Castle

Author: Jeanette Walls

Pages: 288

Genre: Memoir

Grade: A

Synopsis: Jeanette Walls grew up in a very dysfunctional family. The family was always on the move throughout the west and living and sleeping in their car and small shacks when they would find them. Her father was a raging alcoholic and her mother had no backbone or drive. Jeanette and her siblings grew up exposed to things that no children should have to see or endure. They often had to rummage and dig through trash to find food while their mother would eat candy bars under her bedspread and their father would waste what little money they did have on booze and gambling. Children in gunfights, the father pimping his daughter at the bar, being groped by an uncle (and the parents not caring about it), using markers to color her legs so the holes in her jeans wouldn't show so much and many other incredible stories are all a part of this memoir.

My Review: It is amazing that the author writing this memoir has made so much of herself. Faced with so many unique challenges growing up, Jeanette rose above them and has related her stories in a such a way that the book is extremely difficult to put down. Jeanette never makes excuses for herself or her parents but simply tries to tell it how it is. You can't help but be sickened by what she and her siblings have had to endure. From People magazine: "Walls has joined the company of writers such as Mary Karr and Frank McCourt who have been able to transform their sad memories into fine art."

From the Book: "(p.1, first paragraph) I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading."

"(p. 11) Every couple of days, the nurses changed the bandages. They would put the used bandage off to the side, wadded and covered with smears of blood and yellow stuff and little pieces of burned skin. Then they'd apply another bandage, a big gauzy cloth, to the burns. At night I would run my left hand over the rough scabby surface of the skin that wasn't covered by the bandage . Sometimes I'd peel off scabs. The nurses had told me not to, but I couldn't resist pulling on them real slow to see how big a scab I could get loose. Once I had a couple of them free, I'd pretend the were talking to each other in cheeping voices."

"(p. 34) I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes."