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| The Glass Castle: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $2.59
You Save: $12.41 (83%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $1.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  (1120 reviews)
Sales Rank: 155
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:
 You'll never throw your leftovers away again. May 26, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I couldn't put this book down. I was outraged on behalf of the child Jeannette and her siblings, but in a wierd way, I liked her strange and dysfunctional parents, who were responsible for the children's misery. I can't explain it. When the author and her siblings were children,the parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls were able to explain the sad, poor condition of their lives as an "adventure", but children become adolescents. As they grew older, their situation worsened. That is when the book became truly sad. As children they still worshipped their father and enjoyed their mother's eccentricities, but as adolescents, the truth of their hungry, cold, dirty, unsanitary, and many times, unsafe condition becomes almost unbearable to read. But read you must! I wanted the kids to get angry with their parents, but they never did. If the author has forgiven her parents for their neglect of these talented and brilliant children, she is truly an angel, because I am not sure I could. I was so grateful for my warm, clean bed, my refrigerator full of food, and indoor plumbing by the end of the book. The mother was the enigma to me. As a mother myself, I could not have watched my children go cold and hungry day after day. These were intelligent people who chose to live this way. I finished the book and still did not know how or why these two people could be so selfish and lazy.
At one point in the book, Jeannette begins to slice a ham that has not been refrigerated for days. (Of course they didn't have a refrigerator in the dilapidated shack they called home.) It was crawling with white worms.
" Mom was sitting on the sofa bed, eating the piece she'd cut. 'Mom, that ham's full of maggots,' I said.
'Don't be so picky,' she told me. 'Just slice off the maggoty parts. The inside's fine."
This is no mother that I could recognize.
I recommend this book highly, but be prepared. It is not for the faint of heart.
THE BEST READ IN 5 YEARS...... May 24, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Since having twins 5 years ago my usual literary pile next to my bed has grown and grown... I am usually too exhausted to get engrossed in today's non-fiction and fiction best-sellers. I became curious about this work after reading a terrific review on it one Sunday in the New York Times Book Review. I had never heard of Jeannette Walls (the author), but the review was so compelling that I took a complete leap of faith and bought it online that day.
Happily, this is the FIRST book that I just could not, repeat, could NOT put down no matter how late it was...... it was so nice to return to that old feeling of not being able to wait to pick up a special book at the end of the day and get completely lost in it....THANK YOU JEANETTE WALLS! What a true masterpiece. I commend Jeannette Walls for her modern day classic about a depraved childhood (from the outside) that felt normal, even loving, from the inside.
Powerful May 22, 2005
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
A fast paced, powerful, stunning biography. Jeannette Walls' mother said she was "addicted to adventure" and that is just how the family lived. Never knew what was going to happen next, or how and certainly not why. Just that it would be sudden, crazy, and far beyond anything you'd ever call normal. An absolutely one-of-a-kind story!
BEAUTIFUL AND GUTSY BEYOND ANY DESCRIPTION May 21, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a magnificant book about a woman who is beautiful and gutsy beyond any description. It truly is an American Angela's Ashes, and is also told with humor and without any anger, rancor or self-pity. The life this woman had as a youngster defies all description. I have several current photos of the author, Jeannette Walls (from Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and various online articles and interviews), and while I was reading the book I kept looking at the pictures to try to reconcile today's gorgeous tall redhead with the little buck-toothed girl from the hollows of West Viginia where she grew up. It is an amazing transformation and makes one think that THIS is who she was meant to be all along. As I was telling my husband about the book, every incident I told him about, horrible though they sounded, was couched with REAL love from her parents, as well as high intelligence and curiosity about the world that nourished Jeannette Walls and her siblings, probably unknowingly, at every turn of their lives. In some ways, she was very lucky -- and especially because after having endured what she did, she seems to bear no ill-will or woe-is-me attitude. In fact, I daresay she is grateful for the knowledge gained from having been her mother's and father's daughter. This book was a delight. I see where one reviewer here said she read it in one sitting in about 4 hours. Not me. I read slowly so I could digest every word, every incident, and I didn't want it to end. These types of books don't come along very often, even though we are drowning in so-called childhood memoirs. This one is a delight and an inspiration.
Thoughtful, insiteful, heartbreaking, brave book May 21, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Glass Castle hit close to home for me. I grew up poor with a mentally ill mother and alcoholic father; who died from alcoholism. I know what it is like to be dirt poor, hungry, have lice and tapeworms. I was saved at 10 by wonderful foster parents. Jeanette Walls book was actually healing for me. Her family and what the children came out of was with such courage and spunk. Her parents molded them; even though it was a disfunctional but loving family in their own way. I realized in me, my past has made me a stonger person too.
Thank you for a wonderful, enlightening special book.
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