The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls (2005)
“A woman watches her parents dumpster-dive from a Manhattan taxi and realizes she has spent her whole life ashamed of the people who made her.”
EraContemporary Memoir
Pages288
Difficulty★☆☆☆☆ Accessible
AP Appearances4
familypovertyresilienceeducationforgivenessself-inventiondysfunctionlovemiddle-schoolHigh SchoolAP English
Character Analysis
The memoir's central achievement is the gap between Jeannette as child and Jeannette as narrator — both versions are present in every scene, and neither explains the other away. Child Jeannette is pragmatic, resilient, and strikingly free of self-pity. Adult Jeannette is controlled, ashamed, and in the process of dismantling that shame. The book is the story of how those two people became one.