What readers think of The Glass Castle, plus links to write your own review.

In this touching book, Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, exposes her true life by the lessons, adventures, and experiences that has brought on her and her family emotionally but also rewarding. The book starts out with mid 30’s Jeannette Walls in New York City sitting in a taxi through traffic. As she waits to go to one of her expensive, nice party, she looks at a homeless woman. She notices that it is her mother and can’t believe it is her. Her reaction was to hide herself so no one could know that they could actually be related. Her battles with accepting her mother being homeless is because her whole life was just moving around, no money, no structure in the family and struggles that came between them. While growing up in her uncontrolled environment, constant hardships and realities made her want more meaning in her life. From all of this, she has become a successful, stable, hardworking and intelligent writer.

I am a quarter of the way through and already find the book not believable. The level of dialogue for a 3 year old is silly. It is much too sophisticated and much too advanced. Furthermore, nobody remembers their 3 year old self in such detail. She has really elevated her 'maturity' in this book to carry on dialogue and make observations about life that are very adult-like. The book is a turn-off. I will read it as a dramatization- but certainly not as a full memoir.

As I was reading this deeply sad book, I kept wondering to myself, could anything else really happen to this family. It is a true story full of shocking, sometimes disturbing, scenes of the life of a little girl and her interesting family. I personally think the book was somewhat hard to finish, but nonetheless, still a good book because of the shock factor.

She's a really good writer. Her choice of words and ways of descriptions that tell of her experience growing up stirred me to keep reading. At times, I found myself angry at her parents, sad and happy about the things that she endured, laughing at how creative she is, and altogether, thinking about my own life.

Some stir hearts with pictures.
Some with dance.
Some with song.
And some can move your entire being,
creep into the very crevices of your soul,
with words.

Jeannette Walls did just that. The Glass Castle will be a work of art, a bold statement of raw life, that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

In other words, I bawled like a baby.

Our book club really liked this book. Couldn't believe that it is a true story! But I guess no one could make this up. This is one of the craziest disfunctional families ever. The father had dreams that would never happen, hence, The Glass Castle. When money became available, they found ways to waste it! All through the book, I kept thinking that this was fiction! The author is the daughter! She survived!

This is a wonderful story of triumph and trial. There are more than one occasions that could have changed any of these people in an extremely negative way, the author just pushes through in telling the story. She doesn't become bogged down in the process, AMAZING READ!

While I was at work a few days ago, one of my co workers said Hey Charlotte after I read your memoir Why? it made me think of another memoir called The Glass Castle, I think you should read it. Wow, I just finished The Glass Castle. It is a great memoir and reminds me a lot of my life growing up. God bless you Jeannette...Love Charlotte Cunningham