The Glass Castle Review

Title of the Book: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Number of Pages: 288
Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Review:

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a captivating memoir about Jeannette's family life growing up. Jeanette was one of four children born to Rex and Rose Walls. The family never had a permanent address and remained rootless to avoid bill collectors. Her father Rex Walls was an alcoholic and failed engineer that came up with many schemes and inventions to get rich. He never followed through with these projects and couldn’t keep a regular job. Her Mother was an ‘excitement addict’ and aspiring artist. Her mother was educated to be a school teacher but she hated working a regular job and actually throws fits over it throughout the book.

Money was tight and between the six of them that became an increasing issue as they got older. No matter how bad of a situation they were in Jeannette always tried to find something good in it. They staggered from city to city with several different living arrangements and junk cars. However many unfortunate events that happen there’s always something Jeanette learns from them. Through trials and tribulations of always being the new kid and growing up almost homeless Jeannette has found a way to come up from this and make a name for herself as an author. Throughout her life Jeanette shows an incredible amount of intelligence and responsibility. She looks out for everyone in the family and tries to give them insight on their actions.

 Mountain Goat as she was called by her father also takes after him with her witty half glass full point of view and her resourceful inventiveness. As she grew up she became more practical and became somewhat of the head of the household and the responsible one while her parents were ignoring their responsibilities. Like when her mother went back to school to renew her teaching license and Lori went to a summer camp. Jeannette was given 200$ for that month for bills and other expenses that she budgeted out. Her father being an alcoholic asked for money and caused her to be off budget and for Jeannette to understand what her mother went through with him. She and her older sister Lori at the end of their high school careers made a plan to get out and move to New York to live a better life. 

This book is one of my top 10 favorite books. Glass Castle is so unique for the plain fact that everyone can relate to at least one part of her story. Lots of sensitive topics are touched on in this book including: abuse, addiction, sexual assault, and homelessness all through the first hand experience of Jeanette. She writes as if you’re living through her and seeing everything and experiencing everything as she did. Since this book talks about such things I would recommend it to an audience no younger than 14. I also think this book because it’s a coming of age story about Jeanette, that it should be recommended to but not limited to young women everywhere. This book also is a good indicator of toxic relationships and there are a lot of lessons and good advice to be taken from it.