A review by sarahemevans
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

5.0

Wow. I don’t even know what to say. This book stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and was simultaneously fascinating and heartbreaking. The author writes her story in such a matter of fact way that at times I wasn’t completely absorbing the horrors that she encountered at every turn. She did such a good job of offering depth and complexity to each of her family members, when she certainly could have offered a caricature that painted her as one of the only good people in the story. All people are distinctly complicated and so often unwittingly dragging the next generation into their own past traumas, even if generally on a much smaller scale. It also gave me so much to think about in terms of the ongoing and growing complexities around issues of poverty and homelessness. None of this is straightforward and there are no easy answers.