Sep 2025 BOTM: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls > Likes and Comments

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (2005)


Rated 4.32 / 5.00

Publisher's Summary
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

I realize I'm taking the group on a different course sometimes. Trying to balance the behavioral health professional take on how to understand/cope with trauma with the memoir take from those who have actually lived it.

I read this last year and enjoyed it. I will pick it up and peruse it again with pleasure!

Started it

I'm enjoying the re-read. Walls has an engaging writing style. She shares her family's dysfunctions, addictions and poverty with the reader giving voice to the particular ages she was when she experienced them. I wish she shared more of the insights she gained or the knowledge she gained about (for example) her father's alcoholism. More to come.

She shares dysfunction from the get go, at age 3, in likely an earliest memory. First responders are baffled at what they found a 3-year old doing. Parents were unrepentant about their neglect. Instead, they hand out criticisms for all, but seem surprised that people aren’t grateful, as if they are handing out candy instead of unsolicited insults. Sounds pretty familiar. She knows how to tell the various nuances of dysfunction without explicitly saying what is dysfunctional about it.

I like the way you put thatt, Steve.

Wow, her Dad is a piece of work. The book summary made it sound like he was OK sober. Not so.

With these types of memoirs I am always most interested in the author's healing journey -- how they addressed their trauma, how they overcame old survival messages and behaviors, etc. That is a piece I'm wishing Walls had spent more time on. I know from my own experience, the journey into healing was long and complex, and continues today. Her writing flows well though, and I'm enjoying the re-read.

Next week I'm leaving on a lengthy cruise and won't have access to this group until mid-October. Bon voyage!

Hope you have a good cruise!

Yes, I saw a couple spots where a seasoned Alanon attendee would probably weather things better.

The summary of the book mentioned dysfunction and that comes in all shapes and sizes. But, I had assumed the drinking of her father was the principal dysfunction. That really doesn’t appear to be the case here. The Dad as she always calls him, drawn out in the audio as Daaad, is not functional when sober, most of the time. He has clever moments quite a bit, but that’s usually to come up with a scheme to get something done while avoiding the traditional work to get it. He seems chronically unable/unwilling to follow anyone else’s rules for very long. He is always skipping town because he’s crossed the line … generally running up a debt that he can’t pay. It sounds like she loves him and yet he is regularly very neglectful.

He intentionally abandoned her pet cat. I think he took it from her hands and threw it out of the car. I’m not sure if the car was moving at the time.

He is utterly oblivious when she falls out of the car and they keep on driving.

He puts them with a baby in the back of a U-Haul and drives for hours not stopping for kids to take a bathroom break. The doors come open on the trailer and he obliviously keeps going until much later another car signals him to stop. His obliviousness is reckless and dangerous but he will not acknowledge it.

The Mom proves with the piano incident to also be oblivious to an astonishing degree. She, like the Dad, is also self-absorbed in her own past times and the kids are essentially fending for themselves.

The drinking happens now and then, but seems to only boil over periodically. It is just odd that the summary seems to miss the mark, overlooking the day to day dysfunction of both parents, focusing on the drinking. Maybe that changes. I’m only 25% in.

Great recap. I wondered the same thing, and kept waiting to read about how she started putting the pieces together.

The Green Lantern …
Her Dad is a bigger piece of work than I realized. Seems he can rationalize anything he wants to do. Sounds like an addict.

Her mom found radioactive rocks and made necklaces with them for her mother, grandma. WTH?

Her mom “didn’t approve of glasses”? WTH?

This wasn’t the easiest read for me. Still going. It is story after story and there is no narrative arc to it. It isn’t going anywhere. That can be OK for a while, but not past halfway. It is just story after story of her parents being an over the top dysfunctional piece of work. And, like I’m Glad My Mother Died, she narrates from the child perspective. There is no looking back commentary on the effects of an event, or an interpretation or feeling. It is only the rather naive and oblivious child perspective. Somewhere at 3/4 through the book, the oldest child finally voices the notion that getting away from a life with these parents might be a good idea, even though it had been beyond the pale from the get go. That is hard to read. I just don’t get that. I think at 3, I started to understood that my parents were a hot mess beyond most people, and I was in danger, and likely would be much happier as all my peers were with relatively normally parents. I get that there is a nature desire to want to see your parents not as a trainwreck … in a wishful thinking way, but to not give voice to any discontent for over a decade of mistreatment is … weird. I get that “normal” is unknowable and you don’t know what your missing exactly when your in the middle of it, but … there is no discussion of normal kids. Only discussion of say the “boyfriend” who was in an arguably even worse predicament. It’s like she is magically blind to normal … unable to see it to comment on it.

I guess I would like a flash back and forward framing, to feel like this is going somewhere and something is being learned from it, and recovery is possible, rather than just endure, endure, endure, overlook, forgive, deny, etc.

Steve, I always appreciate your insight. Your own self-awareness is inspiring. My take on her book is she's a great example of how frozen denial can make us. The fact that you understood at a very early age that what was going on was dysfunctional is, in my experience and from the thousands of stories I've heard from other traumatized (in childhood) adults, uncommon. The vast majority of us blamed ourselves for many years over our parents. In my childhood, I didn't realize we were poor until my mom remarried a man who seemed rich -- he ate meat every day and shopped in 'real' stores instead of thrift stores.

My opinion of her book echoes much of what you saw too.

I go to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) meetings. It is a separate 12-step group. It is pretty amazing how many people come in and won’t say a peep for nearly 6 months. They take awhile to trust people, even just to hear their story. Crazy stuff happens to many of them. I’ve been told multiple times I didn’t fit because I was too functional and not a sufficient train wreck on paper. But, eventually I relate a story and they come later and say wow. That was some legit crazy stuff you went through.

I think one of the stories that sticks with me is a guy telling me how his mom drove to the casino and parked and said she’d be right back. Left him in the car as a small child. Didn’t come back for 3 days.

Her dad is a piece of work. Generally I use that phrase when profanities just won’t suffice. This quote from the summary is not appropriate. It cast him in a positive light as if the drinking is just now and then. But, by my reading, he’s a is an incorrigible wreck all the time. It bothers me that the summary misportrays it so.

When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly.

Dad destroys the clay sculpture of his daughter who was trying win an art scholarship. Then, he steals all the money from the the kids piggy bank, which was obvious he was going to do from the moment she said the word. He destroys their dreams and then complains that they aren’t grateful for the lessons he is teaching them. This guy is absolutely horrible, and she doesn’t use strong language to call a spade a spade.

Steve, I've been in Al-Anon for 43 years and ACA for over 30. I also sometimes attend open 12-step meetings for AA, NA, etc because I need the reminder that under it all, we are all struggling with codependency and trauma. Anyway, my point is, I am SO SORRY anyone ever questioned you about your presence or told you that you didn't fit. That kind of behavior is anathema to the 12 Principles and the 12 Concepts, and is inherent in our openings. I personally have never witnessed someone at a meeting behave like that and if I had, I would have gently but firmly reminded them about 'taking inventory' on other members.

Re the book: the author still carries denial about her past, and while it's understandable she wants to recognize her dad's better qualities, it's unhelpful to her recovery.

At 85% in, all of the sudden, escape is an option. The oldest sister leaves the home, she gets on a bus, and I like that she did not hug her dad or even speak to him since he looted her piggy bank and drank away the money. Then he parades around as if he did her a favor, because the addict cannot in their own mind do wrong to exercise their addiction. They can rationalize anything … in their own mind. Their logic is … not logic … but they tell themselves and anyone who’ll listen that whatever they do is ok. So, she gets on the bus, denying the hug, and never looks back. Doesn’t look out the window. She isn’t heartless. He is that utterly despicable. Still, the summary makes him sound sweet when he isn’t drinking. But he was sober when he stole the piggy bank from his children and smashed it open, took all the money, and walked to the nearest bar. Piece of work.

Then. The author leaves, and the parent true colors begin to shine brighter. Dad drinks. Mom does her own art thing. They do their thing. They don’t parent the the two remaining kids in the household who are effectively left to fend for themselves. But, they’ve more or less done so from birth so … they manage to survive.

How is it that Mom’s self-absorption and neglectful parenting are not called out? Is that supposed to be acceptable? You just can’t cast an unfit parent down a deep enough well, but there aren’t words here … as much as you might like the writing … to do that. Also conspicuously absent is any recognition for a good parent, or better yet, the parent who faces adversity and rather than abandoning their children or throwing cats out of cars, bends over backwards and seems to draw energy from the muck they find themselves lying in, in the ultimate alchemy of nature, to muster the strength to still do right by their kids. Yet, you’ll find no words of any such appreciation here, … oddly enough. There are just those two huge yawning voids in this book. Huge.

She graduates college and mom cannot have anything to do with it. Classically self-absorbed, cannot possibly acknowledge the success of a child. And, dad … she wants him there, … but doesn’t, because it is just way too risky. He might pull an astonishing stunt like he did yelling out something amazingly inappropriate like he did while drunk in church. Wasn’t that Christmas church? Must have been. He similarly minimized her graduation.

She is getting more realistic, but still wears the rosy glasses.