The Glass Castle: A Memoir |  | Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Seller: totalqualitybooks
Rating:  1424 reviews
Sales Rank: 178
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 1.1
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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| • | ISBN13: 9780743247542 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
NEW. Remainder mark on bottom.
Amazon.com Review
Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. 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. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. 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 (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). 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. --Brangien Davis
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 1424
 Reader #1424 who feels like.... March 18, 2010
Wojciech Langer (Toronto, Ontario)
...hundreds of others. Your roulette of luck starts right away at the moment of conception. Then, how good, bad, boring or strange life can be?! Read it and decide how it was for Jennette Walls. Exceptional and unforgettable memoir.
destroys the good/bad parent continuum March 16, 2010
Mark Oestreicher (El Cajon, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this stunning memoir released several years ago, and it was sitting on our bookshelf, as my wife had read it. i'd heard great things about it, and can only say they undersold it. rarely, if ever, have i read a true story that so defies the "good/bad" continuum on which we like to plot families of origin. really, jeannette walls' upbringing is ghastly, and one i would not want imposed on even the most annoying or horrible kid i've ever met. but, at the very same time (or, more accurately, intermittently) there are regular moments of love and insight and adventure that lift this off that continuum. i've met many kids from privileged surburban homes (the opposite of walls' experience) who's parents provide for physical needs, but spend their lives completely disengaged from their kids in every emotional and relational way. just when i was wanting to smack her parents, they did or said something breathtakingly wonderful. and just when i was thinking i might give them the benefit of the doubt (something the author seems at peace with doing, in the end), her parents become icons of off-the-charts selfishness and stupidity. it's an amazing story in-and-of-itself; but the implications are greater than the story. most parents (myself included) fall on both sides of the bell curve; only a few fall, consistently, to one side or the other; walls' parents are so outside the standard deviation in both directions that the bell is no longer meaningful.
Angela's Ashes Meets Mosquito Coast March 15, 2010
Marcia Fine
This was a great memoir reminiscent of Mary Karr's Liar's Club. I loved every minute because her point of view was natural and real. My heart broke for these children who were so neglected and hungry. It's hard to understand how parents can rationalize their behavior other than that they were both sick. Good for Jeanette for rising above it all. Poor Maureen who was left with nothing. I'm about to start Half-broke Horses.
Marcia Fine
[...]
The Glass Castle- by Jeannette Walls March 11, 2010
Coky Michel (Miami, FL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the best book I've read in a long time- Jeannette Walls has a moving story to tell, which she does with insight and humor. Her most recent book, "Half Broke Horses", the true story of her grandmother, is also a jewel. I saw Walls at the Miami Book Fair in November- she was quite inspiring, (and funny!), and she received a standing ovation after her presentation.
 If you've been given nothing-- its hard to give back March 7, 2010
Grace (CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book feeds pain bodies. The author gave me nothing but a string of negative incidents where her parents were neglectful and or feeding their addictions and being quirky and or mentally ill. It was boring. There is so much more to this story but Walls' holds back, most likely because it will be in another edition which her happy readers will buy into, and once again you will get only half a story. In my humble opinion it is half a book, and appeals to the voyeurs in us. If you are feeling sad in any way dont read this book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 1424
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