Book Review: The Glass Castle

NOTE: This is a review of a book I had to read for school. There are going to be no gifs, since I feel like that would be disrespectful to Jeannette Walls and her family.

For my summer reading, I have to read two non-fiction books. One of which, is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a memoir about her life and struggles with her parents.

I liked this book WAY more than I thought I would. Especially since it's a book for school and I make it a point to not enjoy those.

But this story was just so honest and heartbreaking and unfortunately realistic. And I loved how Walls remembered all sorts of details that tied the story together in some of the best ways possible.

I also enjoyed reading the stuff that happened (but not in an enjoying-someone-else's-pain but more like this-is-really-well-done-and-you-tell-a-great-story). Like when she was 3, she was making hot dogs in a tutu and accidentally caught on fire. Or when her dad moved them around a ton throughout their childhood.

They talked a lot about family loyalty. In my opinion, I felt like Walls and her siblings didn't owe their parents anything. Because of them and their efffed-up ideals of parenthood and domesticity and what they should do with their money (the dad: alcohol, the mom: needless paint stuff and pointless trinkets that she just hoarded), Jeannette's, Lori's, Brian's and Maureen's childhood were made harder than needed. While it gave them great experiences, there are just some stuff a family shouldn't have dealt with.

Like (and this gets into the graphic part of the book) there are a lot of incidents of sexual abuse. Especially between family members. And I was just honestly disgusted. How could people do that to each other? I felt sick while reading it.

And how the parents dealt with it wasn't any better. Like the Dad used Jeannette and her body to get guys' guards down for pool (I'm not sure how to describe this but this is pretty much what happened) and Rose Mary told Jeannette that it wasn't that big a deal and how women just make too much of a big deal about these sorts of things. Which just made me angry.

But, back to the idea of family loyalty, Lori, Jeannette and Brian followed each other to New York and made their own lives there. And every (at first Sunday, then it became once a month) they'd meet and discuss things and talk about their new lives.

Rating this, I got to say it's a 45 out of 50. It was insanely well-written and well-described, but for my faint heart I just got to knock down a couple points because what happens in this book is purely disgusting. But I'm recommending it to people left and right. What are you gonna do? :)

Bye!

Owyn