The Glass Castle

This memoir opens with a scene of Jeannette’s homeless mother rooting through garbage cans. Jeannette, on her way to a society dinner, catches sight of her and hopes her mother doesn’t see her. In her memoir, freelance writer Jeannette Walls tells of being raised by a father who drifted from town to town, picking up work or gambling their meager savings away, and an artist mother who went along for the ride. Walls and her three siblings grew up in poverty, without social norms. Yet Jeannette climbed out of this life and into a successful career in New York City. Julia Gibson’s narration is straightforward and replete with the crude language that Walls’s father taught all his children.