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A review by annemaries_shelves
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
One of my oldest TBR books and I'm so incredibly glad I finally picked this up.
Walls has an incredibly rich talent for story-telling and displays immense vulnerability in sharing her family's story.
Reading this 10 years after I first learned about it, I have more empathy for the parents and a better ability to understand the nuances and grey zones of parent-child relationships, the circumstances that lead to unstable, unsafe, and neglectful households, and the sheer luck it takes to dig yourself out of systemic poverty the way the Walls children did.
That said, her parents are terrible parents in a lot of ways. You can tell they love their children and want to install certain values like independent thinking, self-reliance, and others. But this often comes at the cost of healthcare, safety, job and financial security, and others risks. While her parents clearly have some mental health issues and substance use disorders to varying degrees (though she doesn't speculate on this) a lot of the circumstances the Walls found themselves in were entirely preventable and manageable. And that infuriates me.
I loved reading about the siblings' dynamics and their resourcefulness and determination to make the best of things - and get the hell out of Welch when they no longer could. I'd especially love to read Lori's story one day - she seems to have a unique experience within the family and I think it could resonate with a lot of people (or maybe it's just oldest children relatability for me).
I have two main critiques that could bring my rating down 0.5 stars (but won't because I loved the experience of reading this memoir to much).
1) The pacing was slightly off in the second half. Jeannette Walls devotes so much time to her early childhood, that we often skip significant portions of her teen years and young adulthood. She only discusses the highlights as compared to the substantial exploration of her childhood and set-up of their family dynamics.
2) Being published in 2005 and set largely in the 60s and 70s there is some outdated language. This includes the R-word and racial slurs.
Overall this is a wonderful and emotional memoir - I can understand why and how it's become a classic in the genre.
Walls has an incredibly rich talent for story-telling and displays immense vulnerability in sharing her family's story.
Reading this 10 years after I first learned about it, I have more empathy for the parents and a better ability to understand the nuances and grey zones of parent-child relationships, the circumstances that lead to unstable, unsafe, and neglectful households, and the sheer luck it takes to dig yourself out of systemic poverty the way the Walls children did.
That said, her parents are terrible parents in a lot of ways. You can tell they love their children and want to install certain values like independent thinking, self-reliance, and others. But this often comes at the cost of healthcare, safety, job and financial security, and others risks. While her parents clearly have some mental health issues and substance use disorders to varying degrees (though she doesn't speculate on this) a lot of the circumstances the Walls found themselves in were entirely preventable and manageable. And that infuriates me.
I loved reading about the siblings' dynamics and their resourcefulness and determination to make the best of things - and get the hell out of Welch when they no longer could. I'd especially love to read Lori's story one day - she seems to have a unique experience within the family and I think it could resonate with a lot of people (or maybe it's just oldest children relatability for me).
I have two main critiques that could bring my rating down 0.5 stars (but won't because I loved the experience of reading this memoir to much).
1) The pacing was slightly off in the second half. Jeannette Walls devotes so much time to her early childhood, that we often skip significant portions of her teen years and young adulthood. She only discusses the highlights as compared to the substantial exploration of her childhood and set-up of their family dynamics.
2) Being published in 2005 and set largely in the 60s and 70s there is some outdated language. This includes the R-word and racial slurs.
Overall this is a wonderful and emotional memoir - I can understand why and how it's become a classic in the genre.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Addiction, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Cursing, Death of parent, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Ableism and Misogyny