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| The Glass Castle: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $1.38
You Save: $13.62 (91%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (1160 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1553
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 074324754X
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.82092
EAN: 9780743247542
ASIN: 074324754X
Publication Date: January 9, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A lovely piece of work April 12, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Whenever I pick up a book set in Appalachia (let alone WV, where I'm from) I always feel a certain desperate hope churned with a healthy dose of despair. There is no denying that many of the stories from our region are sensational (indeed!) and all too often that is what we are left with.
But I had high hopes for THE GLASS CASTLE, and was not disappointed. Sensational the story is, but told with such wryness, such humility, without a shred of self-pity or sentimentality, I couldn't put the book down. There were so many descriptions I found familiar -- the second floors too rotted to stand on them, the delight in hometown heros like Chuck Yeager. There were passages that hurt to read, and passages to cheer. Best of all, despite the bleakness, there were passages that made you laugh out loud, not only from the humor, but because you couldn't help but recognize something of yourself in them.
Nothing pleases me more than another West Virginian making good - and this is a book about a side of America all too often forgotten or else misunderstood and used by both the left and the right. Having made her own choices, Walls gives us her world to decide for ourselves. I hope this book finds the many readers it deserves.
A masterpiece of kindness, self deterimination April 11, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is nothing short (in my opinion) of a masterpiece when it comes to a study in kindness, self determination and 'live and let live' with compassion. It shows that one can put some function in a dysfunctional family and do so with dignity. It is a book that every uppity person and every cookie cutter suburbanite should read, because it cut thru the self absorbed I am better than others attitude and makes you face the reality that those 'we' turn away from, are people with families, who often have wanted to help but wouldn't allow help to be provided.
It also was a personal reminder to me of how an eccentric Ph.D. friend with a trust fund who lives in a cabin near me is looked on with respect and admiring amusement, whereas another eccentric, a woman, who attends mass with me and lives in a camper on the back of her truck is looked upon as a bum, tramp or some other derogatory term. Yet she is the one who is the most altruistic and non-judgmental.
It is the book I have chosen this year to give as a gift to friends and family. They will not be disappointed.
A Family Full of Contradictions April 11, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Before acquiring a copy of "The Glass Castle", I read several reviews about it, as well as an interview with the author. Jeannette Walls' grace and sense of humor in the face of adversity convinced me that she is much like Frank McCourt, and I looked forward to reading a memoir that might be grim but is no pity party.
Though "The Glass Castle" bears more than a passing resemblance to McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" (one of my favorite books), I don't know how to begin to describe it without using seemingly nonsensical oxymorons to explain the main events and players. Rex and Rose Mary Walls are a suitably unstable match for each other, with Rex's unpredictable behavior and his wife's "addiction to excitement". However, raising children (or I should say "bearing"; the children essentially raised themselves) was not a good idea for them. Rose Mary has BIPOLAR written all over her, though that word is never mentioned, and Rex is a severe alcoholic. But they are both imaginative and creative and talented, as are their offspring. Unfortunately, this gets in the way of the ability of either parent to maintain steady employment. (Well I TOLD you this would be contradictory.)
Jeannette is the middle child of three, as the family shares their "adventures" throughout the desert out West, often doing the "skedaddle" in the middle of the night to escape bill collectors and the like. Much of this turmoil becomes a bonding experience for the children, which serves them well over the years. THANK GOD they have one another, I kept thinking. A fourth child, Maureen, was born years later, and by that time the family was stuck back in Rex Walls' dreary home town of Welch, West Virginia. Consequently, Maureen did not receive the benefit of the others' bonding experience, and she would often escape to friends' homes to avail herself of such luxuries as food, electricity, and indoor plumbing. She had not been primed to view a lack of such as part of an "adventure". This difference between herself and her siblings made a definite difference in the outcome of their lives as time went on.
Making the best of a bad situation is one thing, but often I felt frustrated and incredulous over Jeannette's relentless Pollyanna optimism. I wanted her to stand up to her parents, although in fairness she did attempt to a couple of times. Rex's pilfering of whatever monies the kids tried to save to escape their predicament, and Rose Mary's refusal to work (despite her teaching credentials) while the children went hungry, was exasperating, and more than crossed the line into criminal neglect. I'm sure I would have been more like Lori, the oldest, and AT LEAST have developed a sarcastic streak. But what a blessing that Jeannette was as kind as she was, by using her ingenuity to figure out how to get Lori on her way to New York City (I'm not telling; read the book) before all hope was lost, and this in turn paved the way for the others to follow.
Jeannette Walls is a journalist with an engaging writing style, and her life history certainly provides ample content (gross understatement) to practice it. I only covered a fraction of it here. There is so much food for thought in her story, and I don't think anyone will regret reading "The Glass Castle".
How to raise self-reliant kids April 6, 2005
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Another in the horrendous-childhood -with-weird-parents category. The grandiose alcoholic father dragged his four children and willfully non-working, artist wannabee, wife around America, ending up as the town drunk in a derelict shack in the miserable West Virginia coal-mining town where he had been raised. When the children escaped to make a life for themselves in New York the feckless parents followed them to become homeless New Yorkers.The time-frame is vague. Watergate is mentioned while the author is in high school, so I deduced she was born around 1960.
Jeannette Walls maintains an admiration and affection for these people who literally starved and beat their kids. Much of the children's abuse was suffered at the hands of bullies who taunted them for being different, although they were able to defend themselves because of having been taught to use handguns from the age of four.
Fabulous April 6, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was the most entertaining thing I've read in the last year - and I read a lot of books. I checked it out of the library, but I'm going to buy a copy because I know that if I'll be reading it again in the future. A keeper!
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