Alyssa Tyler editor in chief
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls was published on Jan. 1, 2005. The self-memoir soon became a national best seller and then took on the movie world with a 2017 production. Brie Larson starred as the main character, the author and narrator of the story, Jeannette herself.
The memoir opens with Walls first memory, burning herself as a toddler from boiling hot dogs. From there, the story continues at a fast pace. The Walls family is unconventional at best, by never living in the same place for long, not enrolling the kids in school, and getting by the bare minimum. Walls details the many times her family would get up and ‘skedaddle’ and then move onto the next place.
Wall’s parents are interesting at best. They both struggle with their own issues, her father dealing with alcoholism and her mother suffering from some form of mental illness. Her father cannot and will not hold down a job, while their mother has a teaching degree but would rather do other things. All these factors lead to them living in despair, with no heating, plumbing, electricity, and overall, destitute ways of living.
Walls continually describes her father as brilliant even with his alcoholism. Many times, throughout the memoir he outlines his plans for building machines that will change the world. However, his biggest goal is to build a glass castle for his family.
As the family travels through the west coast, picking up random jobs and moving when the ‘mob’ is hot on her father’s tail, they eventually end up in their father’s childhood hometown. There, the family finally ‘settles’ down and the four siblings begin to grow into young adults.
They continue to fall into despair as they fall deeper into poverty, the three oldest siblings begin to lose faith in their parents. Especially their fathers dream of building a glass castle. The three siblings begin crafting a plan to move to New York City, attend college, and get out of the small town they lived in for years. From there, their parents follow them to the big city, and begin to live off the streets by their own choice.
Overall, this story was heartbreaking but inspiring in the same way. I do wish that the author went into further detail about her time at school. I would have liked to see more information concerning her career and the direction that it took her in. In the end, the title of the memoir really pulled the entire book together. Overall, I rate this a 4/5.