num_pages: 341
description: This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents. At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane, middle class existence' she had always craved. In her apartment, overlooked by 'a portrait of someone else's ancestor' she recounts poignant remembered images of star watching with her father, juxtaposed with recollections of irregular meals, accidents and police-car chases and reveals her complex feelings of shame, guilt, pity and pride toward her parents.
language: English
title: The Glass Castle
titlecomplete: The Glass Castle
characters: Jeannette Walls, Lori Walls, Brian Walls, Maureen Walls, Rex Walls, Rose Mary Walls
genres: Book Club, Biography, Contemporary, Autobiography, School, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Adult, Memoir, Audiobook
ratings_count: 1155634
places: New York City, New York, West Virginia
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: ALA Alex Award, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Lincoln Award
publisher: Virago