This book made me feel a lot. Some parts made me angry or sad for the situations they were in and then other parts I could feel the love. I like how the author told the good and the bad. She seemed to try to just keep it real.

I don't understand all of the positive reviews on this book. The writing style killed me. There were not a lot of stopping points or page breaks so the story seemed to be one long stream of consciousness that went on forever. The sentence structure was not complex, and the sentences very short and more than a little repetitive. Lot of "us kids" or "we kids".

As far as the story goes, I understand it is a memoir, but it seems unrealistic to think that she would remember the detail she did, as far as full conversations that happened when she was 3 years old. And there is only so many times as a reader I want to read about a potential, attempted, or actual molestation of one of the four children. These kids had terrible parents and were let down by every adult in their lives, I get it, but the story became boring in its continual dire doomsday story telling. I should have felt sympathy for the author having to eat out of garbage cans or coming home to find her money stolen by her drunken father, but I had become immune to the story by that point.

I feel like this would be one of those rare cases that make a better movie than a book, but I just didn't care about the author at the end of the story. And when I say "end" I say that loosely, because that is what happens, it just suddenly ends. I feel like there should have been more of a "where are they now" ending with regards to the author and her siblings.


Sonia, a goodreads reviewer, put it in much better words than I did, so I am going to share her review:

Normally, addicting books have amazing characters. That is why they are addicting. How could you stop reading when their destiny is written on the next page? It's the secret to Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Gone with the Wind -- any book containing characters that resonate throughout literary history.

However, I cannot say the same for The Glass Castle. How could a book be so addicting yet have such a bland and romanticized heroine? While I read this book in one sitting, I became more and more detached to the narrator Jeannette as the book went on.

Jeannette's childhood is horrific, with neglectful parents, molestation, and starvation as just a few of the atrocities. However, when Jeannette retells these events, she is emotionally flat. She lacks insight into both her youth and herself, leaving the readers with a boring character who seems to have no flaws. If you asked me to describe Jeannette's personality, all I could come up with is "terrible childhood" and nothing about the woman herself.

I understand that since this is a memoir, it can be hard to write accurately about yourself and portray your own character in a negative light. However, memoirs are the perfect place to analyze your own flaws and weaknesses. Since Jeannette does not seize this opportunity to shed light on herself, she comes off as a flat Mary-Sue, defined by her terrible surroundings. She never portrays herself in a negative light, not once, making me lose respect for her.

Besides the shallow lead, this book has a steady and stagnant tone, never varying from uninteresting detachedness. Jeannette tells everything in the same tone, from being literally burned alive to marrying her husband. The addictiveness of this book stems not from any dynamic characters or varying tones, but from the horror of what's happening to her.

While Jeannette's story is fascinating, she herself is not. In fact, this book makes me feel manipulated: She relies on horror or her surroundings and edits out her flaws to make readers like her.

I give this book three stars for sheer readability and addictiveness, nothing else.

To say that Walls had an unusual childhood would be a massive understatement. She didn't have any of the stability with a roof over her head or meals to eat that most children in the US take for granted, but she did have some amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to do things that many of us will never do.

I'd like to say that this is due to that her parents rarely followed the rules (or, you know, laws) and gave her and her siblings even fewer to follow. She was a child of people who had the kind of wandering existence that I've known some to pine for, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

In fact, it seems like it was hardly ever sunshine and rainbows. They'd have long stretches of okay times with fairly regular meals and then periods of near starvation where they had to go through the trash to eat. But their parents did have an odd splendor in the way they dealt with such an extreme level of poverty. They weren't perfect, but Walls manages to tell the story in a way that never quite judges them. They were who they were and she seems to have accepted that, even when it embarrassed her.

There were a few stories I really loved, one of which I am totally keeping in my pocket just in case I'm ever at that point with my own family. There were also lots of points in the story where my heart broke for Walls and her siblings. Some people are well suited to "adulting" and others are not, her parents are just not those people. Their hearts appeared to be in the right places though. Or maybe it's just the way Walls tells the story.

She tells the story as she encountered it, not inserting knowledge from later in life to situations, not guessing what may have been in their minds based on information she had down the road. She doesn't seem to be protecting them either, never shying away from their less attractive traits.

The movie based on her life will be out soon (August 11) and I'm thinking about seeing it, though not in the theater. We don't normally go to the theater for movies we can't take the six year old to. After reading the book, I'm not 100% sure I want to see it, but the cast intrigues me. Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson both have the ability to be heartbreakingly vulnerable about the worst parts of a person and I'm not sure how they're going to portray it. It would be easy for any director with these actors to make it heart-warming or heart-wrenching. I'd be happy with a combination. The book left me with that Good Will Hunting feeling where they went for the heart but it left me with a good feeling overall. I hope the movie does that to.

Have you read the book? Are you planning on watching the movie?

To say that Walls had an unusual childhood would be a massive understatement. She didn't have any of the stability with a roof over her head or meals to eat that most children in the US take for granted, but she did have some amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to do things that many of us will never do.

I'd like to say that this is due to that her parents rarely followed the rules (or, you know, laws) and gave her and her siblings even fewer to follow. She was a child of people who had the kind of wandering existence that I've known some to pine for, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

In fact, it seems like it was hardly ever sunshine and rainbows. They'd have long stretches of okay times with fairly regular meals and then periods of near starvation where they had to go through the trash to eat. But their parents did have an odd splendor in the way they dealt with such an extreme level of poverty. They weren't perfect, but Walls manages to tell the story in a way that never quite judges them. They were who they were and she seems to have accepted that, even when it embarrassed her.

There were a few stories I really loved, one of which I am totally keeping in my pocket just in case I'm ever at that point with my own family. There were also lots of points in the story where my heart broke for Walls and her siblings. Some people are well suited to "adulting" and others are not, her parents are just not those people. Their hearts appeared to be in the right places though. Or maybe it's just the way Walls tells the story.

She tells the story as she encountered it, not inserting knowledge from later in life to situations, not guessing what may have been in their minds based on information she had down the road. She doesn't seem to be protecting them either, never shying away from their less attractive traits.

The movie based on her life will be out soon (August 11) and I'm thinking about seeing it, though not in the theater. We don't normally go to the theater for movies we can't take the six year old to. After reading the book, I'm not 100% sure I want to see it, but the cast intrigues me. Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson both have the ability to be heartbreakingly vulnerable about the worst parts of a person and I'm not sure how they're going to portray it. It would be easy for any director with these actors to make it heart-warming or heart-wrenching. I'd be happy with a combination. The book left me with that Good Will Hunting feeling where they went for the heart but it left me with a good feeling overall. I hope the movie does that to.

Have you read the book? Are you planning on watching the movie?

I enjoyed this. I got pretty into it, cheering for Jeannette and her siblings throughout the book.

The mom annoyed me, always saying she needed to stop living for others and take care of herself when that's all she ever did and she had 4 children to take care of. And the dad taking money from his own children... Generally, it was a very frustrating book. Haha. But in a good way.

 

*Reviewed on June 2, 2016.*