“The Glass Castle” is the debut novel of Jeannette Walls, published in 2005. This memoir is unlike any other book I have read before. Walls injects no opinion when telling the various tales about growing up in her family which allowed me to form my own attitudes about people in her memoir or certain events in the book.

The book centers about the author’s life from her earliest memory to when she is a grown adult. Walls describes what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic father and her artist mother, while constantly moving around the country. She tells of the hardships she and her family faced and portrays what it was like growing up in poverty.        

 The book had the ability to spark various emotions within. There were times I wanted to throw the book across the room. I was so frustrated that her stubborn mother would not get a job because she already did “so much” for the family. I rooted throughout the novel for Jeannette and her three siblings as they struggled to succeed in life.

In the end, “The Glass Castle” left me with feelings of inspiration and happiness. For anyone who has enjoyed “Half Broke Horses,” another novel by Jeannette Walls or likes to read non-fiction, I highly recommend that you read “The Glass Castle” soon.