The Women’s Book Group will be discussing The Glass Castle at our meeting on Thursday, July 10 th, at 7pm in the Hospitality Room.'The Glass Castle' by Jeannette Walls has been selected for the 2008 Summer Reading Program at Appalachian State University, announced Chancellor Kenneth E. I definitely recommend reading The Glass Castle. This book is a lesson in courage and strength, and a study in how desperate life can be for children growing up in extreme poverty. She also has the wonderful ability to forgive her parents’ deficiencies and love them for the gifts they were able to give their children.

Through the entire story Jeannette exhibits perseverance and maturity her parents could only wish to have. Her siblings eventually follow her, and her parents move to New York as well, choosing to be homeless rather than change their unconventional life and attitudes. Jeannette finds a job and saves enough money so that, after her high school graduation, she leaves West Virginia for New York City. At lunch, so that she would have something to eat for the day, she would hide in the school bathroom and dig through the trash for food her fellow students had discarded. Jeannette describes her efforts to hide the family’s extreme dysfunction and desperate poverty so that she would look “normal” in her school. The family eventually settles in a West Virginia mining town near the family that Rex Walls had tried to escape. Jeannette and her three siblings were forced to raise themselves, care for each other, and even their own parents at times. Her mother, Rose Mary, preferred to view herself as an artist and writer rather than a parent. Her father, Rex Walls, was at times a brilliant teacher for his children but also an alcoholic who lead his family on years of nomadic travels to avoid his debts.

Jeannette Walls tells the story of growing up so very poor in all material things that even food and shelter was often difficult to find, and so rich in imagination, intelligence and determination that her eventual escape from poverty and her positive attitude in life is impressive. This stunning memoir is both heartbreaking and inspiring.

Book Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The castle of glass book