The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Jeannette Walls

Dec 2006 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

THE BELOVED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER—FROM THE AUTHOR OF HANG THE MOON

The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers.

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing—a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

The memoir was also made into a major motion picture from Lionsgate in 2017 starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts.

Ratings and reviews

This tragic tale evidences more than simple idiosyncratic behavior on the part of this author's parents. There are tales of frank child abuse, leaving children on their own, children hungry, children setting themselves on fire trying to cook a meal at age four. The list goes on and on. Perhaps this memoir proved cathartic for the author. It is a well written, well crafted view into the life of children truly fallen down through the looking glass.

Meh. It's a memiore so I expect accuracy. But it opens up with her enjoying Persian rugs, pearls, and Vivaldi? Who are you, Danielle Steel? I think it's meant to give a moral on accepting other's different forms of happiness in life, but it never gets there. Just a kid growing up in basically a gypsy home. Move, trouble, move, trouble, move, go to school, change ways, be successful. Add an alcoholic father and free spirit mother and thats the book. The glass castle is only minimally relevant even with the symbolism it's meant to provide (promises not delivered). I don't recommend this book because it doesn't give the reader anything but something to read in the bathroom. That being said, the shampoo ingredients offer more use in life.

More books about idiot humans who should never of had children yet had them then felt they had the right to ignore them bec "they didn't want the responsability" and yet people should be enamored BY her "free spirit"? Behind moronic not impressed by this writer either..and both patents should of been tossed in jail ..vilified not admired..human sheep

About the author

Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.