The Glass Castle
2005
- poor
- problem families
- dysfunctional families
- homeless persons
- case studies
- family relationships
- nyt:paperback_nonfiction=2007-03-03
- biography
- children of alcoholics
- extraterrestrial beings
The story
A story about the early life of Jeannette Walls. The memoir is an exposing work about her early life and growing up on the run and often homeless. It presents a different perspective of life from all over the United States and the struggle a girl had to find normalcy as she grew into an adult.
What it’s like
Clear, unshowy sentences carry this memoir, written in a conversational voice that sounds like a woman telling her own story across a kitchen table, with humour sitting alongside the hurt. The sensory world is vivid in a dusty, sun-scorched way: desert heat, cramped trailers, Christmas mornings improvised from scrap, the smell of a Depression-era West Virginia town and the grit of rented rooms in cities that never quite feel like home. Its vibe is bittersweet and resilient, with a wry undertone that keeps it from sinking into despair. The pacing is brisk and episodic, moving through years in short chapters that each end on a sharp image. Its emotional register is intimate and unsentimental, following a restless, fiercely independent girl learning to see her chaotic childhood clearly and to make her own way toward stability. Expect a steady stream of neglect, hunger, drunkenness and a father's volatile temper; violence is mostly recalled rather than staged, and the harder scenes land with quiet weight rather than gore or graphic detail. Best suited to readers who enjoy true-life stories of endurance and family complication, and who are comfortable with difficult material.
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