The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
by Jeannette Walls
Cindy Knoke‘s review
Aug 13, 12 ·
This has to be the best memoir I have read.
Jeanette Walls has a lot guts.
She worked as an entertainment editor for MSNBC when she wrote this book, hob-nobbing with celebrities and such. No one she worked with could ever have imagined this successful, attractive, bright, high-functioning woman, could ever have come from the background and childhood that she did.
This is what makes her gutsy.
She told everyone.
She shreds off the patina of her social status and tells us in heartbreakingly beautiful prose what her childhood was like She doesn’t minimize or gloss over things. She gives us the whole sad story.
Two, umm, “eccentric” parents? Basically an artsy, but mentally ill mother. An gadget-gizmo-tinker, alcoholic dad. A vagabond childhood of continuous movement and upheaval. Being destitute, eating out of trash cans, wearing ragged clothes, worrying about her siblings, caring for them with parents whose heads were someplace else.
The family ends up in horrific circumstances in a West Virginia mining town in her father’s childhood home with relatives straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock horror flick.
Yet, she doesn’t really describe it like this. She includes all the above unflinchingly.
But so much more.
There is love in this book. Lot’s of it. Love for her parents, and her brothers and sisters. She describes her parents in many ways, affectionately. She recognizes the creativity and intelligence behind their oddity. She describes her father teaching her about science and astronomy. She describes her mother and her positive thinking and her love of art.
This is what makes this author so unusual and admirable. Her memoir is beautifully written and un-self pitying. It is a tour-de-force.
Highly recommend..
This has to be the best memoir I have read.
Jeanette Walls has a lot guts.
She worked as an entertainment editor for MSNBC when she wrote this book, hob-nobbing with celebrities and such. No one she worked with could ever have imagined this successful, attractive, bright, high-functioning woman, could ever have come from the background and childhood that she did.
This is what makes her gutsy.
She told everyone.
She shreds off the patina of her social status and tells us in heartbreakingly beautiful prose what her childhood was like She doesn’t minimize or gloss over things. She gives us the whole sad story.
Two, umm, “eccentric” parents? Basically an artsy, but mentally ill mother. An gadget-gizmo-tinker, alcoholic dad. A vagabond childhood of continuous movement and upheaval. Being destitute, eating out of trash cans, wearing ragged clothes, worrying about her siblings, caring for them with parents whose heads were someplace else.
The family ends up in horrific circumstances in a West Virginia mining town in her father’s childhood home with relatives straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock horror flick.
Yet, she doesn’t really describe it like this. She includes all the above unflinchingly.
But so much more.
There is love in this book. Lot’s of it. Love for her parents, and her brothers and sisters. She describes her parents in many ways, affectionately. She recognizes the creativity and intelligence behind their oddity. She describes her father teaching her about science and astronomy. She describes her mother and her positive thinking and her love of art.
This is what makes this author so unusual and admirable. Her memoir is beautifully written and un-self pitying. It is a tour-de-force.
Highly recommend..
Plunked this one in my wish list on Amazon. (Translation: Waiting for the price to go down a bit, just being honest.) This sounds very interesting, thanks for the heads up…
It is a brave and compelling book and you won’t regret the read. Let me know what you think when you do & cheers to you~