The Glass Castle

By Jannette Walls

Review by Katie Daringer

The book that I will be reviewing is The Glass Castle by Jannette Walls. The book was published in 2005 and had been a New York Times best seller for 421 weeks as of June 3, 2018. If you look up Walls on google you will see that she is described as “an American author and journalist widely known as former gossip columnist for MSNBC.com and author of The Glass Castle, a memoir of the nomadic family life of her childhood.” Where all of this is true, I feel as though I got to know Walls through her work in The Glass Castle. How I first came across this book was in one of my college classes. I was neither excited nor financially able to order any of the books for my classes. I went to my teacher about it and he loaned me a copy. With in the first few pages I was hooked. It didn’t feel like I was reading about someone’s life. Even though on the cover of the book it said memoir I thought I was reading a piece of creative writing.
The Glass Castle is about a girl, her four siblings, and her parents who don’t really “belong” anywhere. As Jeannette grew older she realized that the way that she and her siblings were being raised was wrong and unstable. Walls was a daddies girl at heart and even when everyone else was against him she was his “little mountain goat.” He made many promises that he never kept. One in particular was the blue prints of the grand Glass Castle, where one day they would all live and would never have to worry about a thing. As the children slowly left “home” they grew to realize how much they really needed a home to come back to. Walls became a successful writer where her siblings were successful in their own professions. Walls was married twice and has no children to succeed her. She is living happily with her husband of 18 years in their home just outside of Culpeper Virginia.
For me this story was a must read do to the fact that it was about someone’s real life story. It was a fast and easy read and would even recommend that high school kids should be taught this book. This story definitely sets the bar for memoirs across the board. I have yet to read another memoir that felt so unreal like this one.