Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Quick Review--The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I read this book last year, brought it to the store where it sold and has just now come back. This is a memoir about an interesting childhood. From the back cover, a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review says "Memoirs are our modern fairy tales...The autobiographer is faced with the daunting challenge of attempting to understand, forgive, and even love the witch...Readers will marvel at the intelligence and resilience of the Walls kids." It is a marvelous book, full of wonderment--the readers wonder at the parents' total lack of reality, at the way the children manage to not just survive but to thrive, and when the book is finished, at the tribute to the human spirit.

2 comments:

Ambi said...

I read this book a year or so ago, and I agree with you, it's lovely and haunting!

CurtsBooks said...

Those children pulling other childrens' unwanted lunches out of the trash in order to have anything to eat is an image that just stays with me. The way the author describes the desert town and the little back road West Virginia town also are haunting images.