The Glass Castle

I shied away from reading this book since it's been published—not entirely sure why. I suppose the synopsis of Walls' memoir never appealed to me. I decided to pick it up for the College Students Spring/Summer Challenge, and ended up loving it.

Walls has an incredible sense of captivity in her writing. As a reader, I felt entertained, worried, sad, and empowered by her siblings and her struggles at various points in the book.

This book was at times difficult to read but always moving. I laughed and cried and found myself thinking about my own childhood with frequency. I had heard so many great things about the book and it lived up to every expectation and then some. If you have experience with an addict, this book might be hard to get through, but there are so many glimmers of hope and optimism to be found.

This book made me angry. I do think that it was well written, and as I come from a family that was pretty poor when I was younger (not as bad as them of course) I did not feel like it was made up. I could very easily believe that everything that happened would happen with an alcoholic parent and another who clearly had some kind of mental illness.

It made me angrier and angrier as I read all of the things that kept happening. How the parents kept destroying every chance and opportunity they had. The ending made me downright furious.

I have to say that I sat down and actually read the book when I heard that the movie was coming out soon. I also found the ending to be believable (the fact that she forgave her parents) due to the fact that they basically ruined relationships for this girl. She clearly did not get what it was like to be loved and settled down with the first man who took care of her and gave her a comfortable life, later getting divorced.

As much as I really wanted to find out what happens at the end, I still felt like I didn't care much about the other children. I kept forgetting about the youngest girl altogether.

The part about Ox the piggy bank was very predictable and I was just counting down the pages until the dad stole the money to buy himself some booze. I felt that part might have been dragged out a little bit as we all (I think) knew what was coming.

Thanks, Jeanette Walls for providing me with a memoir about a dysfunctional childhood that I actually dislike.

I would have appreciated this book more if its author had allowed me to come to conclusions on my own rather than beating me over the head with her exposition. I know it's bad that your parents were neglectful; you don't have to show me a scene and then write several paragraphs basically just saying “Look how bad it was! That's really bad right? Super crazy bad.”

There are so many other authors than are successful with utilizing a childlike tone. I was incredibly disappointed when, after reading a book everyone had told me I would love, I felt strongly underwhelmed. This is the only book I've had the urge to sell after reading.

My wife choose this book for her book club, I begrudgingly read it because it seemed like a quick read. The more I read the more hooked I got. The movie makes this story out to be a relationship between a father and daughter but I felt that the central themes were more about overcoming adversity and seeing the good in the most bleakest situations.

I'll probably be blamed for being too much of a realist and pessimistic but Walls life journey is not unique. Too many kids grow up in poverty, have mentally unwell parents, and experience abuse before they are even teenagers. Especially in America, from the North to the South, East and West, majority of our population struggle and those struggles are passed down onto kids. But where this memoir differs from the same story we all know is Walls writing talent and the tone established within the pages. It is a feat to successfully immerse readers into the same terror you felt without overdoing it with just anger or sadness. It is a strong and beautiful memoir.

The unbelievable living conditions this family went through is enough to grip any reader. Anyone who thinks “I had pretty crazy parents” has nothing on Jeannette Walls.
But what really makes this story unique is the perspective Walls writes from. She recreates her memories and feels them as she experienced them at the time, rather than reflecting back on them with her current perspective. The result is that you begin by seeing her father as a genius and a hero and her mother as brilliant and creative, and as she grows, she begins to portray the good with the bad. Writing this way, the reader can understand why she seems to hold an unwavering loyalty to her parents in spite of the obvious neglect and mistreatment she suffered.
The book is packed with symbolism and complex relationships, and though it may not be a factual autobiography so much as a story based on her actual childhood, it excellently portrays her emotions toward a family which put her through horrific experiences while showing her unconditional love. It's a true must-read.

Tara Westover's “Educated” meets J.D. Vance's “Hillbilly Elegy”. I actually quite enjoyed it, although I was expecting that it would make me sick to read about another fucked up life because of idiot parents. It's a story about how someone's beliefs makes them stand out and also, despite the cost of their beliefs, they're willing to keep them until they die.

This book may have been difficult to read at times, but I can most certainly appreciate the author's willingness to present her life story in such an honest way - highs, and lows, and everything in-between. It is hard to imagine myself in her shoes, growing up in the environment she did, and yet this was her reality. There are children who grew up in homes full of abuse, neglect, and disappointment, are growing up in these homes, and will be as long as we are living this side of heaven. All the same, the author does not ask the reader for pity and often reminds you of the love she had for her father, regardless of all the ways he hurt and failed her throughout the entirety of her life. It is always so interesting to learn the back stories of people who you would never guess have the upbringing and childhood experiences they did, and this is one such example. I would recommend this book but would say this is not the book to read if you're expecting puppies and rainbows or are looking for a mindless, feel-good read.

I can see why this book is on so many favorites lists here on Goodreads! I really enjoyed this. Walls illustrates and expands her childhood world so broadly and fantastically that it indeed felt like fantasy. She wove the story of her childhood and adolescence like an adventure, when in reality it was stitched together with all the horrors of life–poverty, abuse, and unhealthy relationships. At times this book was very frustrating to read–not because of the writing style, but because of how horrific and sad the story was when it could have been anything else. Walls' parents were the most frustrating, yet fascinating, part of the story. They were larger-than-life in their selfish yet childlike and adventurous ways. They painted their experiences like a fairytale they were living in every moment, from petting a live cheetah to sitting hungry in a damp and freezing shack. Perhaps this is how they coped with the lives they led–making it a living story in the present. This is pretty much required reading for memoir lovers.

Wow. What a story. How do you grow up like Jeannette Walls and fit into mainstream American life? Moreover, Walls seems to have found a way to accept, even love, her mom and dad, despite their reprehensible behavior as parents, behavior that included the children going hungry, allowing relatives to molest the children, and foregoing medical care for the children's serious injuries.

HMMM it's so hard to talk about the book without talking about Walls's childhood? It's... impressively weird and cringe-inducing. It's impressive how Walls is able to document an arguably abusive childhood while still expressing some level of empathy and even admiration for her parents. I was furious reading about Jeannette's mother hiding chocolate while her children went hungry, but I also felt for her mother when she cried to her children that they always forgive their father for his drinking, and they should forgive her for her weakness as well. I also thought her framing device, of starting off with Jeannette seeing her homeless mother and not doing anything for her, was great. It starts her off as a somewhat less-than-sympathetic narrator, but by the time you get to the end and see more of the Wallses... it's understandable.Overall, I didn't enjoy this as much as I enjoyed [b:Half Broke Horses 6366437 Half Broke Horses Jeannette Walls http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348507420s/6366437.jpg 6553801], but I admired it and appreciated it.

Heartbreaking, twisted, and horrifying, but hopeful, inspiring, and optimistic all at once
This book was so much more than I expected coming in.
It was my grandma's favorite book, so I wasn't expecting much, but this book opened my heart and made me look at my life from a different perspective.
You begin looking at Jeannette's life with wonder and a little bit of jealousy, wishing you were as adventurous and experienced as she was as a young child. But as the story moves on and becomes darker and darker as Jeannette's parents become less and less stable and the children grow more and more mature and independent, you're shellshocked by the harsh realities they had to endure.
I often found myself forgetting this was a true story, because how could someone really endure this much?
Near the end of the book, the perseverance of the Walls children and the hope they hold constant for a better life than their parents had is more than inspiring, and challenges you to find a more creative way to overcome any challenges you face in life.