Rarely does a book come along that can be finished in one night. “The Glass Castle” is one of these rare gems that keeps the reader awake and guessing into the late hours of the night.
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” So begins Jeannette Walls’ haunting autobiography of her uncanny and often tragic childhood. The reader is immediately drawn into a world that both shocks and saddens through prose marked by witty humor and clever dialogue.
Walls begins her journey by remembering when she was just 3 years old cooking a hot dog on her own. Her mother Rose Mary was too consumed with her latest painting to notice her daughter standing over a stove with a pot of boiling water. As she is cooking, Walls looks down to see flames creeping up her best pink dress.
She is brought to the hospital in a neighbor’s car (her family did not own one at the time) and ends up with third-degree burns on her body. The nurse at the hospital asks why a 3-year-old was making herself hot dogs, and Walls responds “Mom says I’m mature for my age and she lets me cook for myself a lot.” Six weeks into her hospital stay, her father Rex comes and kidnaps her from the hospital to avoid paying the bill.
“The Glass Castle” retells how Walls, her two sisters and her one brother moved around from Southwest desert towns to escape the constant threat of bill collectors. Her father was a smart man who taught his children about physics and geology, but had a “little bit of a drinking situation.” When he was sober, Rex was a kind and charming man who captured Walls’ young heart the way every good father should. But when he drank, Rex turned into a monster. Her eccentric mother Rose Mary believed in being self-sufficient and that cooking a meal that took too much time was a waste. A painting was a much more important thing to spend time on because a good one lasted a lifetime.
The Walls children did not receive presents for Christmas, partly because they had no money for gifts and partly because her parents did not believe in buying useless junk. They often went to bed hungry and resorted to digging through the garbage at school to find leftovers from their classmates. As they got older, some of the Walls children, including the author, faced sexual abuse from family members. Her mother asked her if she’s been hurt and Walls responded with a sheepish “No.” Rose Mary tells her daughter abuse is a matter of perception and that too many women make a big deal out of sexual assault anyway.
The hardships that Walls and her siblings face as they grow up are at times unbelievable and repulsive. From resorting to eating butter for dinner, to living in a house with no running water, to cold winter nights huddled in a bed with all her siblings, to having to paint their legs with marker to cover holes in tattered pants, Walls keeps readers on their toes. Her natural gift for storytelling and her ability to keep any bitterness toward her parents from diluting the story is both refreshing and moving.
“We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure,” Walls writes about her childhood.
Author Walls may seem like a surprising candidate for such a heartbreaking and poverty-stricken childhood. She is a regular contributor for MSNBC.com as the gossip columnist, dishing out the latest juice on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Her childhood was a secret that only a few close friends knew about until she wrote the memoir.
“I hadn’t told people about my past; when people asked, I’d demur or lie a little bit,” Walls admitted in an interview posted on one New York Web site, the Gothamist. “Some people think my parents are absolute monsters and should’ve had their children taken away from them. Some think they were these great free-spirited creatures who had a lot of wisdom that a lot of parents today don’t.”
Walls debated about writing her memoir for almost 20 years while fear of failure kept her from completing it. She said that after writing the book, many people commented to her that aspects of their own childhood reminded them of her story and that she is not the only person with a weird family.
“I hate this word ‘bonding,’ but it is bonding – like oh my god, we’re all freaks,” Walls said in the interview.
“The Glass Castle” made the New York Times list of 100 notable books in 2005 and received encouraging reviews. Publishers Weekly also listed it as a “most memorable memoir.”
“I’ve never really felt bitter. I’m a really lucky person. I’ve got a great job, I’ve got a wonderful husband, I’ve got a great life,” Walls said about her ability to overcome her past and make the most of what little she had been given. “I’m not going to say I don’t have any scars from the whole thing, both figuratively and literally.”
Forget James Frey’s controversial “A Million Little Pieces” and read this extremely moving memoir of loss and redemption.

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