Review: The Glass Castle (A Powerful Memoir NOW IN THEATERS)

By Jeannette Walls

Rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Goodreads Rating: 4.24

Genre: Memoir

Publication Date: January 17th 2006

Format Read: Paperback

Goodreads Summary: The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing–a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

THIS CAME OUT AS A MOVIE LAST WEEK!!! IT’S OFFICIALLY IN THEATERS!!! TALK ABOUT GOOD TIMING, JOCE!!! (please excuse me as I give myself a pat on the back for being amazing)

In all seriousness, I planned reading this book so that I’d be able to watch the movie when it came out, and I could not be more happy that I did.  It’s been on my mom’s display shelf for years, and I was a little reluctant because it felt like it could be super boring (I mean, it’s NONFICTION).  But there was nothing not to like about this book.  It was SUPER GOOD, SUPER INTERESTING.  Jeannette’s story is so inspirational and beautiful, and the way it was written kept my interest the entire time.  Even if you’re not normally into nonfiction, I would recommend this one.

I know there’s really no such thing as “characters” in this book, because they are all real people, but I’m going to do this section anyways.  You felt for every single person in this book, especially Jeannette, and I think they were fantastically well developed so that you could see each side of them– the one she saw as a little kid, and how that perspective developed as she got older.  I felt like not only did I know the characters, I WAS Jeannette the entire time I read it, and I understood exactly WHY she felt the way she did towards her father and mother.  It was powerfully done and I think made the story.

This was non-fiction!?!?!?!

I keep asking myself this question over and over again because it seems too painful to be true, and yet the details are too precise and heart wrenching for it to be anything but.

The Glass Castle takes you through Jeannette’s entire life up to this point, starting from her first memory.  Her life is absolutely insane, because her parents were essentially impoverished nomads who were poor simply because they chose not to do anything about it.  This led to a very unique perspective on life for all of the Walls children, and that comes through in her writing.

I’m really reluctant to say anything more because I’m afraid of spoiling the “shock factor” which made this book so powerful to me.  But it’s incredible.  Genuinely emotionally shockingly beautifully powerful.  Read it and you’ll understand.

I mean, this is really sort of hard.  It’s sort of told in terms of short stories, because obviously the author is writing over a really long period of time, and so she has to skip the “less important” parts in order to fit it all into the fairly skinny little book.  Her writing style was detailed and yet informative, and extremely emotion-evoking.  Like it left me sobbing multiple times.

I LOVED THE CASTING FOR THIS MOVIE!!! I mean, Brie and Woody were both PERFECT in their roles, and the other girls that played Jeannette were equally as incredible, I couldn’t believe that they were CHILDREN because they were so impressive.

Although the movie didn’t follow the true events exactly, or show all of the parts of the book, it did a really good job and I thought it captured the true essence of the story.  I would 10/10 recommend.

This book was SO SO SO GOOD PLEASE READ IT.  I am so overwhelmed by this entire story, the beautifulness of it, and the way it was written.  I think it deserves to be read just because it makes you appreciate your own life so much more, and gives you such a great appreciation for what other people go through.  Plus, honestly it’s a true pleasure read, you can really enjoy it and feel like it’s a novel. So what are you waiting for! Buy it already!

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Have you read Glass Castle? Watched it? Are you looking forward to it? What did you think!!?!?!

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