The Glass Castle by Jannette Walls
Page Length: 288 pages
Publisher/Publication Date: Scribner, 2006
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
In the opening scene of Jeannette Walls,’ The Glass Castle, we are invited into an NYC taxi cab with Jeannette on her way to an important business dinner. As we are stuck in traffic, our gaze turns to the sidewalk, where we see her mom, a homeless woman, digging through a dumpster. Imagine all the layers, emotions and circumstances that lead up to this event. What if your parents are unconventional, unreliable, and sometimes downright humiliating? If nothing else, it makes an engrossing story.
At times funny, moving and sad, this is the messy life story of a girl growing up and learning to make her way despite parents who have mental health issues, alcohol use disorder and spotty work histories. Walls takes us to the beginning in the Arizona desert where she describes her sad, unconventional childhood including a scene where she burns herself at age three, while cooking hotdogs for lunch in their trailer and lands her in the hospital for months with severe burns. The stories she retells are fascinating and give you that “can’t look away” feeling. During her teenage years, Walls describes her family’s move back to her father’s hometown of Welch, West Virginia, a coal mining town far past its prime. Here is where her alcoholic father gets the idea to build his “glass castle” for the family to live in, but his drinking prevents him from holding down a job or turning dreams into reality. He only got as far as a huge hole in the ground, which ended up as the family’s personal garbage dump.
While much of this story is deeply personal and sad, Walls is flawless in her ability to describe the messiness that comes with having parents who are addicts or suffer from mental health issues (or both). Her complicated relationship with her parents contained not only anger and resentment, frustration and loneliness, but also the inescapable love and hope. She conveys this beautifully and shows us how she ultimately embraces a story and a peace that she can live with. It is a story of the deep ties that bind one woman to her parents, even when it’s not a healthy relationship, and her coming to terms with living a successful, productive life despite her upbringing.
Walls is a talented writer whose work is hard to put down. I’m looking forward to reading her new novel, Hang the Moon, which comes out in March 2023.
Ooh, that does sound like a good book! I have been looking for something moving, but with a little escapism for me too. This might fit the bill. 🙂
You make this book sound so good. Definitely adding that to my reading wish list x