2nd Quarter ORB Review

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. Scribner New York 2005. Genre: Memoir

The glass castle is a heartwarming memoir that tells the story of the life of a dysfunctional family, and the importance of love and respect. The Walls are not an average family. They are a nomadic family that moves from place to place throughout the western U.S., in search for gold to fund the family’s dream of building a glass castle. Jeanette’s mother and father were definitely different than most parents. The main things that they taught to their children were to live life to the fullest, and have no fears. The pursuit of these things resulted in the dysfunctional childhood of their children, and their fast transformation into adults. When time got to tough, money was getting to tight, and their parents were getting to crazy, the Walls children had to venture out into the real world, and work for their own survival without the protection of their parents, but they brought the values that they learned from their parents with them to wherever life and the world took them.
“Some people are born storytellers. Some lives are worth telling. The best memoirs happen when these two conditions converge. In The Glass Castle, they have,” reads the book jacket.
The story is told in a way that shows the adolescence that Jeanette had when she was a child growing up the way she did, and how she was naïve in certain situations that she faced in her adventures with her family. As the story progresses, Jeanette starts to show the maturity she had, and that deeper understanding of the circumstances that she was facing in her survival with her irresponsible parents.
The writing style of this book reminded me of the writing style that Harper Lee used in her book To Kill a Mockingbird because she also made maturity and understanding a big part of the her book and her writing style. She really shows the intellectual growth that the children go through throughout the book, and their deeper understanding of important social issues (especially Jem), and that resembles the writing style of Jeanette Walls in this book.
"A lot of our neighbors on North Third Street were weird. A clan of Gypsies lived down the block in a big, falling-apart house with plywood nailed over the porch to create more indoor space" (page 102) This is when Jeanette is still young, and this quote shows how the author shows her age in the way she writes.
I really enjoyed this book. I thought every detail in it was important to the story, and the story had a huge amount of life. When I began reading it I could not stop turning the pages, because every memory that Jeanette put in her book was more exciting than the last. I also had a personal connection to the book, because it made me appreciate my childhood, and the guidance my parents have provided for me, and everything they do that isn’t always in their best interest, they do it because they care about me. These are some of the things that the Walls children never had growing up, and that was what made the story so powerful.