The Glass Castle: A Memoir (book)

Jeannette Walls was a gossip columnist in New York when she saw her mother rummaging through trash in Manhattan and realized her parents were homeless. That moment opens The Glass Castle, which then goes back to explain how she got there—raised by a brilliant, alcoholic father and an artist mother who valued freedom above stability, a family that lived in mining towns, desert scrublands, and eventually a condemned house in a West Virginia coal town. The book is remarkable for its tone: Walls doesn’t write her childhood as straightforwardly traumatic, nor does she pretend it was fine. She’s honest about the hunger, the danger, and the ways her parents failed their children, while also conveying genuine love for a father who was both fascinating and devastating. One of the most read memoirs of the past twenty years, and one that holds up on rereading.