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The Glass Castle: A Memoir (book) Paperback – January 17, 2006
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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.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateJanuary 17, 2006
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.9 x 8 inches
- ISBN-10074324754X
- ISBN-13978-0743247542
- Lexile measure1010L
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
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.
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. An exclusive Q&A with Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
Q: How long did it take you to write The Glass Castle and what was that process like?
A: Writing about myself, and about intensely personal and potentially embarrassing experiences, was unlike anything I’d done before. Over the last 25 years, I wrote many versions of this memoir -- sometimes pounding out 220 pages in a single weekend. But I always threw out the pages. At one point I tried to fictionalize it, but that didn't work either.
When I was finally ready, I wrote it entirely on the weekends, getting to my desk by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. and continuing until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. I wrote the first draft in about six weeks -- but then I spent three or four years rewriting it. My husband, John Taylor, who is also a writer, observed all this approvingly and quoted John Fowles, who said that a book should be like a child: conceived in passion and reared with care.
Q: How did you decide to follow The Glass Castle with Half Broke Horses?
A: It was completely at the suggestion of readers. So many people kept saying the next book should be about my mother. Readers understood my father's recklessness because they understood alcoholism, but Mom was a mystery to them. Why, they would ask, would someone with the resources to lead a normal life choose the existence that she did?
I would tell them a little bit about my mother’s childhood. She not only knew that she could survive without indoor plumbing, but that was the ideal period of her life, a time that she tries to recreate. I think that for memoir readers, it's not about a freak show– they’re just looking to understand people and get into a life that’s not their own. I thought, let me give it a shot, let me ask Mom. And she was all for it. But she kept insisting that the book should really be about her mother. At first I resisted because my grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, died when I was eight years old, more than 40 years ago. But I have a very vivid memory of this tough, leathery woman; she sang, she danced, she shot guns, she’d play honky tonk piano. I was always captivated by her. Lily had told such compelling stories—I was stunned by the number of anecdotes, and that Mom knew so much detail about them. Half Broke Horses is a compilation of family stories, stitched together with gaps filled in. They're the sort of tales that pretty much everyone has heard from their parents or grandparents. I realized that in telling Lily's story, I could also explain Mom's.
Q: Why did you decide to write Half Broke Horses in the first person, and how much of this "true-life novel" is fiction?
A: I set out to write a biography of Lily, but sometimes books take on a life of their own. I told it in first person because I wanted to capture Lily’s voice. I’m a lot like my grandmother, so it came easily to me. I planned to go back and change it from first person to third person and put in qualifiers so the book would be historically accurate, but when I showed it to my agent and publisher, they both said to leave it as it is. By doing that, I crossed the line from nonfiction into fiction. But when I call it fiction it’s not because I tarted it up and tried to embellish things, but wanted to make it more readable, fluid, and immediate. I was trying to get as close to the truth as I could.
Q: How has your relationship with your mother changed in recent years?
A: Several years ago, the abandoned building on New York’s Lower East Side where Mom had been squatting for more than a decade caught fire and she was back on the streets again at age 72. I begged her to come live with me. She said Virginia was too boring, and besides, she's not a freeloader. I told her we could really use help with the horses, and she said she'd be right there. I get along great with Mom now. She's a hoot. She's always upbeat, and has a very different take on life than most people. She's a lot of fun to be around -- as long as you're not looking for her to take care of you. She doesn’t live in the house with us-- I have not reached that level of understanding and compassion-- but in an outbuilding about a hundred yards away. Mom is great with the animals, loves to sing and dance and ride horses, and is still painting like a fiend.
Q: What do you hope readers will gain from reading your books?
A:Since writing The Glass Castle, so many people have said to me, "Oh, you’re so strong and you’re so resilient, and I couldn’t do what you did." That’s very flattering, but it’s nonsense. Of course they’re as strong as I am. I just had the great fortune of having been tested. If we look at our ancestry, we all come from tough roots. And one of the ways to discover our toughness and our resiliency is to look back at where we come from. I hope people who read The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses will come away with that. You know, "Gosh, I come from hearty stock. Maybe I’m tougher than I realize."
From School Library Journal
Review
"Walls has a God-given knack for spinning a yarn, and The Glass Castle is nothing short of spectacular." ― Entertainment Weekly
"Extraordinary." ― Time
"Each memory is more incredible than the last... That Walls recounts them so well and in such detail is our good fortune." ― The Plain Dealer
"On the eighth day, when God was handing out whining privileges, he came upon Jeannette Walls and said, 'For you, an unlimited lifetime supply.' Apparently, Walls declined His kind offer." ― Chicago Tribune
"Charles Dickens's scenes of poverty and hardship are no more audacious and no more provocative than those in the pages of this stunning memoir." ― The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Some people are born storytellers. Some lives are worth telling. The best memoirs happen when these two conditions converge. In The Glass Castle, they have." ― New York Newsday
"The Glass Castle is the kind of story that keeps you awake long after the rest of the house has fallen asleep." ― Vogue
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black-and-white terrier mix, played at her feet. Mom's gestures were all familiar -- the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value that she'd hoisted out of the Dumpster, the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked. Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, but still she reminded me of the mom she'd been when I was a kid, swan-diving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud. Her cheekbones were still high and strong, but the skin was parched and ruddy from all those winters and summers exposed to the elements. To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City.
It had been months since I laid eyes on Mom, and when she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she'd see me and call out my name, and that someone on the way to the same party would spot us together and Mom would introduce herself and my secret would be out.
I slid down in the seat and asked the driver to turn around and take me home to Park Avenue.
The taxi pulled up in front of my building, the doorman held the door for me, and the elevator man took me up to my floor. My husband was working late, as he did most nights, and the apartment was silent except for the click of my heels on the polished wood floor. I was still rattled from seeing Mom, the unexpectedness of coming across her, the sight of her rooting happily through the Dumpster. I put some Vivaldi on, hoping the music would settle me down.
I looked around the room. There were the turn-of-the-century bronze-and-silver vases and the old books with worn leather spines that I'd collected at flea markets. There were the Georgian maps I'd had framed, the Persian rugs, and the overstuffed leather armchair I liked to sink into at the end of the day. I'd tried to make a home for myself here, tried to turn the apartment into the sort of place where the person I wanted to be would live. But I could never enjoy the room without worrying about Mom and Dad huddled on a sidewalk grate somewhere. I fretted about them, but I was embarrassed by them, too, and ashamed of myself for wearing pearls and living on Park Avenue while my parents were busy keeping warm and finding something to eat.
What could I do? I'd tried to help them countless times, but Dad would insist they didn't need anything, and Mom would ask for something silly, like a perfume atomizer or a membership in a health club. They said that they were living the way they wanted to.
After ducking down in the taxi so Mom wouldn't see me, I hated myself -- hated my antiques, my clothes, and my apartment. I had to do something, so I called a friend of Mom's and left a message. It was our system of staying in touch. It always took Mom a few days to get back to me, but when I heard from her, she sounded, as always, cheerful and casual, as though we'd had lunch the day before. I told her I wanted to see her and suggested she drop by the apartment, but she wanted to go to a restaurant. She loved eating out, so we agreed to meet for lunch at her favorite Chinese restaurant.
Mom was sitting at a booth, studying the menu, when I arrived. She'd made an effort to fix herself up. She wore a bulky gray sweater with only a few light stains, and black leather men's shoes. She'd washed her face, but her neck and temples were still dark with grime.
She waved enthusiastically when she saw me. "It's my baby girl!" she called out. I kissed her cheek. Mom had dumped all the plastic packets of soy sauce and duck sauce and hot-and-spicy mustard from the table into her purse. Now she emptied a wooden bowl of dried noodles into it as well. "A little snack for later on," she explained.
We ordered. Mom chose the Seafood Delight. "You know how I love my seafood," she said.
She started talking about Picasso. She'd seen a retrospective of his work and decided he was hugely overrated. All the cubist stuff was gimmicky, as far as she was concerned. He hadn't really done anything worthwhile after his Rose Period.
"I'm worried about you," I said. "Tell me what I can do to help."
Her smile faded. "What makes you think I need your help?"
"I'm not rich," I said. "But I have some money. Tell me what it is you need."
She thought for a moment. "I could use an electrolysis treatment."
"Be serious."
"I am serious. If a woman looks good, she feels good."
"Come on, Mom." I felt my shoulders tightening up, the way they invariably did during these conversations. "I'm talking about something that could help you change your life, make it better."
"You want to help me change my life?" Mom asked. "I'm fine. You're the one who needs help. Your values are all confused."
"Mom, I saw you picking through trash in the East Village a few days ago."
"Well, people in this country are too wasteful. It's my way of recycling." She took a bite of her Seafood Delight. "Why didn't you say hello?"
"I was too ashamed, Mom. I hid."
Mom pointed her chopsticks at me. "You see?" she said. "Right there. That's exactly what I'm saying. You're way too easily embarrassed. Your father and I are who we are. Accept it."
"And what am I supposed to tell people about my parents?"
"Just tell the truth," Mom said. "That's simple enough."
Copyright © 2005 by Jeannette Walls
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Reprint edition (January 17, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 074324754X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743247542
- Lexile measure : 1010L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.9 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Author Biographies
- #18 in Women's Biographies
- #35 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Jeannette Walls was born in Phoenix, Arizona and grew up in the American Southwest and Welch, West Virginia. She graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York for twenty-five years, writing for New York Magazine, Esquire, and MSNBC. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years, has been translated into more than thirty languages and was made into a film starring Brie Larson. She is also the author of the best-selling novels 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. Her new novel, Hang the Moon, will be published by Scribner in March 2023. Walls lives in central Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.
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Dr Vogel
English 340
May 7th 2014
The Glass Castle
In the memoir, “The Glass Castle”, written by Jeannette Walls. She writes about her childhood, growing up with unorthodox and irresponsible, yet intelligent and talented parents. Moving from one city to another, living in a variety of environments, from a mobile home, to a motel at one point, to an abandon train depot, and then to a rundown miner’s house until her and her siblings moved to New York on their own finally. Their father, a man, who in some aspects could be mistaken for brilliant, is a belligerent drunk, can’t keep a job, and steals his children’s hard earned money, that they are saving to finance a new life in New York City and then spends it on booze. Then a mother who is an artist with a college degree, but refuses to act like an adult and get a job in order to take care of her children. Jeannette and her siblings have no choice, but to fend for themselves and find a way to get themselves out of this terrible dysfunctional environment.
For the children of this story growing up was full of unexpected adventures and struggles with consistent poor living conditions. The children would routinely go for days without eating anything, or when they did eat the meals consisted of very poor nutritional value. At one point Jeannette and her brother have to dig through the school garbage container for leftover food. This often led to the kids being bullied and/or ridiculed by their peers because of their social status and unkempt appearance. However, even with these misfortunes the children managed to excel in school. Despite their unfavorable situation, they were extremely resilient and somehow managed to find humor in their unfortunate predicament.
An example of the children’s resiliency is…one day, Jeannette being the resourceful girl she was, after a visit from a Child Protective Services, she went to the library and researched their options to get themselves out of this predicament. After many hours of research Jeannette came up with a solution. She ended up giving her mother an ultimatum; to leave her father or she needed to find a job and improve their living conditions. Jeannette stressed to her mother that they cannot keep on living like the way they had been. Although hesitantly, their mother decided to get a job as a teacher. However, it was short lived due to the mother being a terrible teacher and having childlike tendencies. The children often had to assist their mother with her duties as a teacher, grading school work and organizing papers. Additionally, to make matters worse, she even at times refused to get out of bed to go to work. This eventually led to the kids having to drag her out of bed in order to get her to work.
Jeannette and Lori, the older sister, finally got fed up with their mother’s behavior. They eventually made plans to go to New York, Lori planned to go first, following high school graduation, then, Jeannette would follow next when she finished High School. From this point on they both saved their hard earned money and put it into their piggy bank. Shortly before Lori graduated High School as they count the days until they could move out on their own and fend for themselves, Jeannette came home to find the piggy bank torn apart and all the money gone. They immediately confronted their father and of course he denied it. They were both devastated, but they stayed positive, put their heads together, and found another way to get to New York.
I enjoyed reading this book and it reminded me to be appreciative and be thankful for my upbringing and supportive family. I found it to be a page turner, very inspiring, couldn’t put it down. The children’s difficult childhood story is a true testament to resiliency. I would recommend this book to anyone in search of inspiration. This book included drama, adventure, humor, and redemption and kept me interested and attentive throughout. In the end…the children triumph over the struggles they encounter due to their irresponsible parents. However, in the end, their upbringing made them, but it didn’t break them. Their shared hardships only made their bonds stronger and together, they prospered with each other’s support.
At its core, this is a coming-of-age story that revolves around Jeannette's unconventional upbringing by her free-spirited, often neglectful, parents. The Walls family lives a nomadic life, constantly on the run from debt, the law, and assumed societal conventions. Jeannette's vivid and candid writing style draws readers deep into her world, painting a vivid picture of their struggles and her complex feelings toward her parents.
What sets this memoir apart is its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions. I found myself rooting for her (naturally), then rooting for her mom, and then oscillating wildly to a deep resentment for her parents neglect and frustration at their failures. The author's storytelling is both heart-wrenching and uplifting, leaving you with a profound sense of empathy for her and her siblings. If you've dealt with absentee or neglectful parents, you'll appreciate Jeanette's portrayal of the complicated love she holds for her own parents. Her ability to convey the inner conflict and the enduring bond she shares with her family is a testament to her writing prowess.
It's a good book, though be prepared to feel incredibly frustrated at times, and incredibly melancholic at others. Honestly, I'd say this is a must-read for anyone that can relate to the complexities of having absentee or neglectful parents.
The memoir begins not with the start of her life, but with a memory of her mother and her sitting and eating in a restaurant when she was an adult. It establishes an important baseline for her relationship with her mother throughout the book, and also sets up what kind of person her mother is for the reader. From there, the book continues on about her life as a young girl and the various different places she and her family travel to as she grows older. It features such sites as Battle Mountain, Phoenix, and other locations, and all throughout this bout of traveling, the interactions between the characters establish their various personalities and ideals. Her father is an intelligent, ambitious man with eccentric tendencies and grand plans for continuing their adventures. He teaches her much about math, science, the stars, and all the while still fulfilling the role of a caring father. Her mother is an aspiring artist and writer, and wherever they travel, whole rooms and a multitude of materials are dedicated to her mother practicing her craft. Brian is an athletic boy, always out playing and roughing it up in all the new places they frequently travel to. Lori is the typical intelligent bookworm, only occasionally venturing outside to play and normally stuck reading a book inside on a comfortable perch. Maureen is only a young baby for most of the book, and so I’ll not go into detail about her.
It quickly becomes apparent to the reader, though, that her family is, to put it simply, heavily dysfunctional. For all her father’s brilliance, grand plans of adventure for the family, and everything he taught Jeannette, he was a severe drinker, and it wasn't uncommon for him to be gone for hours at a time, getting absolutely pickled and only stumbling home when he was retrieved by his family or managed the walk there. Her mother, in spite of loving her children, tended to place her own wants and desires above theirs were her art or literary career concerned, like the time she kept refusing to go to her job at their local school unless forced to by her kids. She also held out of the ordinary beliefs, and this governed the way she raised her kids. The chief example of this is when, as a very young child, she was being treated at a hospital for severe burns after spilling boiling water over herself at home. After a few weeks spent at the hospital, getting her burn wounds healed, her family broke her out of the hospital, with her mother herself suggesting that they should’ve just taken her to a local Native American witch doctor.
Top reviews from other countries
Heartbreaking and at times making me laugh out loud.
Thought-provoking, I heard several teachers /schools incorporate this book as reading material!
Terrific book, highly recommended to everyone (16+).