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The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Memoir

The Glass Castle

by Jeannette Walls

Quick take

Before there was Educated there was The Glass Castle—an iconic, brutally honest memoir about a complicated upbringing.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Icons_Rural_update

    Rural

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_NowAMovie

    Now a movie

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_Unsettling

    Unsettling

Synopsis

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.

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