Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle
The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Book Type: Paperback
joann avatar reviewed on + 400 more book reviews


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.
Truly astonishing-a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar, but loyal, family.