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Description
THE BELOVED 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER—FROM THE AUTHOR OF HANG THE MOON 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. Read more
Publisher : Scribner
Publication date : January 17, 2006
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 074324754X
ISBN-13 : 42
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #1,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Author Biographies #13 in Women's Biographies #29 in Memoirs (Books)
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
Jeannette Walls was raised by parents who did not make economic security for the family a priority. Her father was an engineer and quick to share his intelligence with his children. He could fix most engines and knew the names of the stars and planets. He was also a hopeless alcoholic, spending his paycheck on booze and leaving everyone’s stomachs empty. Her mother was an artist and writer who never sold a painting or a book. She made no money except when Walls and her siblings pleaded with her to be a teacher—a job she could never hold down because she didn’t like showing up. Her parents were irresponsible, and throughout her entire childhood, Jeannette and her siblings never knew stability. When they lived in California, they camped in the desert and worried for water. When they lived in Arizona, they lived in a house filled with cockroaches that had no locks on the doors. When they lived in West Virginia, winter froze the water, rainstorms poured through holes in the roof, and a mudslide carried the front steps away. There were many instances when, without warning, their father would disappear for a few days, or their mother would refuse to get out of bed, or they wouldn’t have anything to eat. What is captivating is that despite her poor circumstances, Walls developed and maintained a strong internal sense of responsibility (so did her three siblings). If her parents weren’t going to take care of her, then she was going to have to take care of herself, and she started learning early. She taught herself how to cook and do household chores, she made her own braces, she fought off a bigger kid who wanted to rape her, and she learned how to manage the little money that they did have. She developed a spirit of resourcefulness throughout the book that led to her paying her way through college with scholarships and part-time jobs and eventually becoming a published author. The book is well written. It moves at a great pace and kept my attention from cover to cover. I enjoyed her voice as narrator and enjoyed getting to know each member of her family intimately through her eyes. It was beautiful to see her question her circumstances and slowly come to recognize that she both loved her parents for their kindness and intelligence and hated them for their abuse and neglect. Her stories have the full range of human emotion infused into them and are equal parts heartfelt and entertaining. At the end of the book, the kids are all adults and living in New York City. Their parents are living in the city too and are voluntarily homeless. Walls and each of her siblings relates to their parents in different ways, much reflective of each of our own complicated family dynamics. If this book had a message it would be: You can’t choose your family, but you can choose how much responsibility you take for yourself.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2025 Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2025 by Cody Allen
Format: Kindle
Speechless. This book was crazy, sad, funny, imaginative, awe-inspiring, and made me love all the tragic characters. What a page turner of life in another world. Her writing made it vivid and unforgettable. Can't wait to read another book authored by her.
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2026 by MW
Format: Paperback
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, an emotionally gripping story of the major events and day-to-day struggles of the narrator, is a stunning read. It has earned both a Christopher Award and a New York Times Notable Book award and was the #1 New York Times Bestseller for 3 years. The author has also written titles such as Half Broke Horses and The Silver Star. Jeannette Walls is the second-oldest child of 4, with the oldest being a girl named Lori, the youngest below Jeannette a boy named Brian, and the absolute youngest a girl named Maureen. Her mother’s name is Rose Mary Walls and her fathers’ was Rex Walls. 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.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2024 by E Tripp
Format: Paperback
Jeanette Walls is superb. What an amazing story.
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2026 by Alejandra
Format: Paperback
Dickensian world of poverty is so abominably tenebrous that we tend to think of it simply as an anachronistic, if not antediluvian, work of fiction apropos of a bygone Victorian era, without translating its elemental essence of nobleness of human spirit that arises from predicaments into our own zeitgeist. The fictitious characters of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip are the embodiment of such resilience, phoenix-like spirits enduring sordid conditions that life could impose upon us to the extent possible. Spinoza, the Dutch thinker and watchmaker, once said that it is Amor fati, love of fate, by which man’s inner strength could raise him above his outward fate. In fact, Nietzsche centuries after corroborated by saying: “That which does not kill me only makes me stronger.” Given the above axioms, what if someone in our contemporary time a fortiori lives to tell such victory of human spirit? That was the reason that I chose The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. All of the aforesaid noble triumph of human spirit over existential horrors of life is substantively and stoically recorded in this compelling living memoir with all her spirit, with all her intelligence, and with all her heart. The story starts as Walls invites us to board her memory train and travel back in times until we return to where we depart along the long and winding railroads of her windy but beloved past. We meet her charismatic, intelligent father whose engineering feats are passed in smolder by his ever independent, anti-establishment, recalcitrant spirit a fortiori emboldened by a spirit of Dionysian portion. The artistically inclined mother is all liberality: She is a devout Catholic - although far from being sanctimonious - and has a heart of gold, save a practical sense of the world. Then there are one brother and two sisters, all of whom are highly intelligent and well-behaved thanks to the moral upbringing by their parents. The parents do not have the gumption to support their children, let alone themselves in terms of economic security, which was the cause of the existential ills of the family, pushing Walls into a position of a de facto breadwinner of the family. What is most profoundly august about Walls through living amid the straits of constant economic insecurity, frequent threats of family separation by social agencies, and dangers of physical harassments was her strong sense of responsibility for her life and for her family that enabled her to endure the existential predicaments. Many people mired in such situations might have develop disputatious streaks of rebellion against everything ascribed to them. However, Walls and her siblings took different attitudinal values to their existential dilemmas: they held on to a sense of purpose and a tenacious grasp on togetherness nurtured by their yearning to achieve a higher aim in life. In fact, such attitude toward life corresponds to one of the tenets of Logotheraphy: in order to find a meaning of life however trivial or nihilistic it many seem, taking a different, constructive stance on what is ascribed helps us to rise above biological, social, and cultural inhibitions during a difficult times because we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to. Which also brings us back to Spinoza’s Amor fati axiom: a different approach to our suffering is sublimated into supremeaning of life in travails by believing in its meaning to every situation with will to live a meaningful life, which then ceases to be a suffering itself. The literary merit of this memoir lies in its absence of unbridled namby-pamby outpourings of emotions in the narrative with a certain air of stoicism. Ironically, Walls’s frank, touchy-willy, matter-of-fact manner of discoursing her story belies her overwhelmingly heartrending heartaches, disappointments, and dismay smothered under factual descriptions of her past that renders the authority of truth and the power of reality without hindrance of prohibitive emotions that often results in fabrication. In her literary confession, Wall achieves catharsis by putting what was in her mind on pages after pages, pushing her pen through in expense of her will to come to terms with her parents, let alone herself, producing forgiveness of her parents’ wrongdoings and acceptance of their frailties in a package of love and tenderness. All in all, Walls’ s message to her reader is clear: you can’t choose your fate, such as a family, but you can choose what to make out of what you are given. In one way or another, the story itself chimes the bells of emotions and thoughts of many of us: the problems and issues that the Walls had and the ones we have or had may have are not oranges and apples through our voyages of life. Walls shows us that notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of life, self-reliance, resilience, and determination helps us to sail through with cheerfulness and humor as handmaids to courage. This honest-to-goodness tale of a woman rising above the planes of her inhibitions speaks straightly to our hearts. This book is a one-of-kind testament to its veracity and quality that upon reading this book, you will feel as if you knew Walls telling a story with a sense of elemental kinship which you can relate to. Moreover, this bona fide memori gives us a sense of relief that no family is perfectly blissful, which resonates with Tolstoy’s view of families as inscribed on the first page of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
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Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2018 by artemis 1291
Format: Paperback
This is the best book I've read in a longggggg time. Ms. Walls recounts her very difficult childhood with such love and heartfelt emotion. She is never angry or bitter but tells the truth as it was. She doesn't sugar coat but she doesn't cry in her beer either. She is probably the most well adjusted adult from an awful childhood as could ever be expected. She obviously loved (still does) her parents regardless of what they threw at her. I wish I had that level of forgiveness. I was sorry I finished the book. I was left wanting more.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2026 by Christina Iacano
Format: Paperback
Thanks, Jeannette, for refraining from shooting rampages in public places, a lifetime of welfare at taxpayers' expense, and scams aimed at cheating retirees out of their savings. Because upbringings far rosier than yours are the stuff from which most of the world's criminals, perverts, porn stars, cheats, government-assistance leeches, and garden variety jerks are made. That you haven't chosen a life of crime, and enabled it in view of being raised by your villainous parents, is a testament to your strong character, grit, and integrity. Antagonists from the creepiest movies and scariest made-for-TV dramas have nothing on the author's parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls. The Glass Castle describes Jeannette and her siblings suffering a lifetime of criminal neglect and recklessness that constitutes mental and physical abuse by anyone's definition. Jeannette burns herself seriously while cooking hotdogs on a stove at age 3. Kids are taught to keep themselves afloat via a "sink or swim" game, when Rex tosses them in the water over their heads. Sister Lori's vision problem isn't addressed until grade school teachers force the issue. Food is scarce and nutritionally-lacking at best, and heat in the winter is non-existent, despite the family's having plenty of inherited money and property (funny how Rex always seems to make ends meet to support his drinking habit). Homes, too, suffer from neglect and end up holey and with exposed electrical wiring (made safe only when the utilities bills went unpaid). Rex attempts to whore teenaged Jeannette away to an older man to pay off a gambling bet. Insult to the Walls' kids injuries comes in the form of their parents' goofy life-philosophy and justification for their actions. The kids were placed in awful situations that were allegedly good for them, to make them tougher, while the parents secretly lived better off. The parents horded food from the kids, bought themselves art supplies while keeping the children in rags, nurtured expensive vices, and demanded high academic performance while failing miserably in their own careers and ambitions. Rex and Rose Mary were very principled while preaching to their kids, as long as their "principles" allowed them to behave exactly as they wanted to at any given moment. Mom Rose Mary was an alleged animal lover, except for when it was expedient to let old Rex take a couple of bagful of too-numerous kittens out for disposal- suddenly, it was explained to the kids that the kittens should be grateful that the Walls family "gave them a little extra time on the planet" (and that it was in the animals' best interest to leave it). Walls' writing is excellent, and she somehow is able to describe her upbringing objectively, yet without detachment. More impressive, still, is her creating moments when you actually begin to feel warmly towards the parents, particularly in their old age; you need to stave off sympathy for them in a few instances by reminding yourself of the story's earlier horrors. Jeannette's love for her parents is unconditional, put to the test throughout The Glass Castle, and freely given time and again.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2007 by buddyhead
Format: Paperback
Hannah Bauman 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.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2014 by Hannah