Book Review: The Glass Castle

During my two 'snow days' off of work, I was able to fit in quite a bit of reading and I finished a fantastic book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This is a memoir about a family of six that live on the brink of homelessness while the children are growing up. The main character, Jeannette, describes the conditions in which they lived, how they managed to feed themselves, the relationships within their family and the constant teasing that went on during school hours. In the end, Jeannette grows up, moves to New York City, graduates from an Ivy League university and writes magazines, books and is a correspondent for msnbc.com. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother was an artist; however, both were extremely intelligent people. There really was no excuse for Jeannette and her siblings to grow up the way that they did...the father did battle alcoholism and never made a true effort to overcome his disease, but the mother was an able bodied person, capable of helping out. Jeannette paints her mother as lazy and selfish in the book--the final kick being in the end when she finds out how much the land her mother had been holding onto throughout most of their childhood is worth. I got really emotionally involved with this book and I truly enjoyed it.