The Glass Castle Review

Wow!! I LOVED this book!

Synopsis (from the Books-a-Million web site):In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing to the horrific. Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.

Again, I will say I just LOVED this book. I started it Sunday and finished yesterday. I couldn't put it down. Some people on the Internet have said some facts may not be exactly true or that Jeannette Walls couldn't have remember from the time she was three. Who are we to judge? I don't remember a lot of things from when I was little, but I sometimes remember the traumatic or from pictures or stories that my family has told me. Doesn't mean they didn't happen. I also think a lot of this book was written as she saw it from the eyes of a child, and I take this book as Ms. Walls story of her childhood. Ms. Walls has written a page turner of a book that I didn't want to put down, and I was sad when I finished it. I had grown to know the Walls children. This a perfect version of pulling yourself up by your boot straps story. At any time they could have given up or become overcome with obstacles, but she didn't.

I would definately recommend this book, and I'm so glad that my Mother-in-law recommended it to me. Now, on to my next book.