The Glass Castle

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The Glass Castle: A Memoir (book)
Author(s) Jeannette Walls
Country USA
Language English
Genre(s) Memoir
Publisher Scribner
Publication date 2005
Media type Print & E-Edition
Pages 288
ISBN 0-7432-4753-1
Preceded by Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip
Followed by Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel

The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by Jeannette Walls. The book recounts Walls' and her siblings' unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing at the hands of their deeply dysfunctional parents.

The memoir spent a total of 261 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list[1][2] and is now under development as a film by Paramount.[3] By late 2007, The Glass Castle had sold over 2.5 million copies, had been translated into 22 languages, and received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association's Alex Award (2006) and the Books for Better Living Award.[4]

Contents

Characters [edit]

Jeannette Walls [edit]

Jeannette Walls is the author and the voice of The Glass Castle. The memoir is told from her point of view, beginning with her unconventional childhood and culminating in her adult success as an editor, journalist, and writer.

The narrative deals with the complex relationship Jeannette and her siblings had with their parents due to the extreme poverty that defined their chaotic childhoods, during which they frequently had no food, wore threadbare and unwashed clothes, were bullied and attacked by other children, and were repeatedly uprooted so that their parents could make a fresh start in another town.

Rex Walls [edit]

Rex Walls was born in Welch, WV, and later joined the Air Force to get out of Welch. During his time in the Air Force, he met his wife Rose Mary. After the death of their second daughter, Mary, as an infant, Rex descended into alcoholism.

Rex is bright and creative when not drinking; the title of the book comes from a promise that he makes throughout Jeannette's childhood that he will someday build the family a Glass Castle to live in, the blueprints for which he carries with him every time they move. Rex loves his family but is responsible for a great deal of chaos in their lives, uprooting them at a moment's notice to move to a new town, spending their already inadequate money on alcohol, and disappearing for days at a time. Although he is trained as a skilled worker, he rarely holds a job for longer than six months and often gets into trouble by arguing with authority figures.

Rex always has projects in mind for getting rich quick, but these never lead anywhere. He occasionally brings in extra money by gambling; at one point he enlists Jeannette in hustling a pool player at a bar by letting the player believe she will provide sexual favors to him. He justifies this by saying he knew Jeannette could take care of herself.

Although Rex's contributions to his family have always been erratic, towards the end of the memoir, Rex comes up with $1000 for Jeannette's final year at Barnard College.

Rose Mary Walls [edit]

Rose Mary is Rex's wife and the mother of Jeannette, Lori, Brian, and Maureen. She is an artist who loves to paint, but is also licensed as a teacher and is occasionally forced to take a teaching job when the family is on the brink of starvation with literally no money left. Even so, she sees taking teaching jobs as a betrayal of her true calling and never takes these jobs seriously, often refusing to go to work in the morning until her children cajole her into going. She occasionally tells her children that life would be much simpler if she didn't have four children to take care of.

By the end of the memoir, Rose Mary chooses to be homeless, seeing it as an adventure and refusing to take help from either of her grown daughters. Jeannette learns later that Rose Mary owns family land in Texas that is worth at least a million dollars, but never used this as a resource when her family was struggling.

Lori Walls [edit]

Lori Walls is the first child born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls. She is the first of the siblings to really question the way the family has been living, and decides she needs to leave home as soon as she can manage it.

Lori and Jeannette work together to save money so that Lori can move to New York after her high school graduation, where she could get a job and send for Jeannette. Over a period of months, they save a sum of money in a piggy bank, but Rex steals it. Jeannette then receives a job offer from a family who is moving to Iowa and want her to come along to watch their children over the summer. Jeannette asks them to take Lori instead and pay for a bus ticket to New York at the end of it.

Lori moves to New York City, and Jeannette joins her immediately after her junior year. In New York, Lori eventually becomes an illustrator.

Brian Walls [edit]

Brian Walls is the only son in the Walls family, the third of four children. He and Jeannette are the closest out of all the siblings. He helps Jeannette defend the siblings from local bullies.

Immediately after his junior year of high school, Brian follows Jeannette and Lori to New York as well. He marries, starts a family, and becomes a cop, eventually rising to become a detective sergeant.

Maureen Walls [edit]

Maureen is the youngest of the Walls children. As a young girl, Maureen spends most of her time in the homes of her friends, eating meals with them (since there is no food in the Walls home), and sleeping over at other people's houses whenever possible.

Lori, Jeannette, and Brian bring Maureen to New York at the age of twelve. Shortly thereafter, their parents move to New York as well. Maureen eventually goes to live with her parents again, but attacks her mother with a knife when her mother tries to kick her out but she stayed there until Maureen was sent to a mental hospital for a year, and after she is released, she buys a one-way bus ticket to California. Jeannette states that she believes all Maureen ever wanted was for someone to take care of her.

Reception [edit]

In The New York Times Book Review, critic and novelist Francine Prose wrote, "What's best is the deceptive ease with which Walls makes us see just how she and her siblings were convinced that their turbulent life was a glorious adventure. In one especially lovely scene, Rex takes his daughter to look at the starry desert sky and persuades her that the bright planet Venus is his Christmas gift to her. Even as she describes how their circumstances degenerated, how her mother sank into depression and how hunger and cold — and Rex's increasing irresponsibility, dishonesty and abusiveness — made it harder to pretend, Walls is notably evenhanded and unjudging...'The Glass Castle' falls short of being art, but it's a very good memoir. At one point, describing her early literary tastes, Walls mentions that 'my favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships.' And she has succeeded in doing what most writers set out to do — to write the kind of book they themselves most want to read."[5]

References [edit]

Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.

  1. ^ "Best Sellers March 18, 2012". The New York Times Best Seller list. 18 March 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-18. 
  2. ^ "Best-selling author to speak in Fremont". The Muskegon Chronicle, Susan Harrison Wolffis, June 03, 2008. 
  3. ^ "Pitt's Plan B inks deal with Paramount". M & C News, Jun 23, 2005. 
  4. ^ "Porter-Gaud hosts noted author Walls". Post and Courier, FYI, September 20, 2007. 
  5. ^ Francine Prose, "'The Glass Castle': Outrageous Misfortune," The New York Times Book Review, March 13, 2005.

External links [edit]

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