The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

I had been overdue for a truly stirring novel when I stumbled across The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, and my craving for memorable words were satisfied.

The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by Jeannette Walls, told from her point of view, beginning with her unusual childhood, starting at age three and culminating in her adult success as an editor, journalist and writer.

The harrowing story recounts the unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing of the Walls children by their dysfunctional, yet loving, parents.

The memoir spent 261 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and was recently adapted to film to be released this summer, starring Woody Harrelson and Brie Larson.

Jeannette Walls is the second oldest of four children born to Rex Walls, an alcoholic, and Rose Mary Walls, a painter and artist. The family moves around Arizona and California every few months when Rex and Mary’s debts pile up, and they have to relocate.

The family enjoys a short stint of stability in Battle Mountain, Nev., when Jeanette is seven years old. Eventually, Rex loses his job, and Rose Mary begrudgingly takes a job as a schoolteacher, which interferes with her artwork. Rex siphons her income for alcohol until the kids grow hungry. Despite the hunger, the kids make due and are happy until an incident occurs that nearly results in Rex and Rose Mary losing their kids. The family then packs up and moves on to Phoenix, where Rose Mary inherits a home from her mother.

Things start off well here for the Walls children, as the home is bigger than anything they’ve ever had. The money Rose Mary inherits, though, is quickly gone, and the house falls into disrepair.

For Jeannette’s 10^th birthday, she asks her father to stop drinking, which he does for some time before relapsing. When the family falls into serious debt yet again, Rose Mary decides its time to pack up and head to Welch, Va., where the kids’ paternal grandparents live.

Things are even worse in Virginia — a different geographical and social landscape than the kids are used to. They’re enrolled in school, and while they’ve had an extensive education, their accents and worn clothing make them appear uneducated, and the other students do not welcome them. They’re regularly beat up and have to defend one another, as Rex and Rose Mary maintain a hands-off approach to parenting, believing their kids should learn to take care of themselves. The family lives in a dilapidated house, and the kids continue to fend for themselves to find food by working odd jobs, while their father disappears for days on end and their mother loses herself in her art.

Rose Mary is a loving mother, but she faces a constant internal struggle between her role as a mother and an artist. Despite his alcoholism, Rex is an extremely intelligent man and loving father with a natural inclination toward engineering. Him and Jeannette share a particularly close but complicated bond throughout the novel.

The overlying theme that keeps the family together throughout the novel, even at their lowest, is the dream of a “glass castle” Rex promises to build — a large, beautiful, modern home, something the family has never had for longer than a few months at a time.

As Rex’s alcoholism escalates, though, the kids realize the dream of a permanent family home is unlikely, and they work to accumulate money to care for one another and to eventually leave Welch and move to New York City. Lori, the oldest daughter, is the first to leave, followed by Jeannette who makes plans to go to college in New York, and finally Brian and Maureen, the youngest Walls children.

In New York, Jeannette gets an internship at a newspaper after graduation, and despite some setbacks, the Walls children all find varying levels of success in New York. Eventually Rex and Rose Mary follow their kids to the city, and while Lori and Brian attempt to help them, they choose to be homeless, maintaining their lifelong belief that one needs little to be happy.

The family continues to face challenges in New York, often brought on by their parents, constantly trying to hold on to relationships hanging by a thread. Eventually, the Walls children go their own ways, keeping in touch sporadically with one another and their parents. While “happy ending” doesn’t necessarily fit a memoir as deeply real as this, the Walls family does manage to achieve a kind of peace by the end — a striking contrast to the story’s events throughout.

Put simply, I adored this book.

While reading, I struggled at times to form a stable opinion on the Walls family. While some of their choices and actions were nothing short of despicable, there’s something to be said for their belief in abandoning the comforts and conveniences of modern life for a more down-to-earth, self-reliant lifestyle.

The Walls children are taught to rely on themselves, to defend themselves, to embrace the natural world, to disregard material items and modern convenience for books, fresh air, human interactions and relationships. Despite the selfishness and carelessness of Rex and Rose Mary throughout the memoir, they do manage to raise strong, intelligent children.

Reading The Glass Castle inspires a lot of anger, fear and sadness, and a lot of love, surprises and adventure. It’s an emotionally exhausting but rewarding book to tackle, told in a frank, expository style. Jeannette Walls truly lays it all out on the table.

Also, no book has made me want to travel throughout the United States more than The Glass Castle.

 Jeannette writes: “Where are we going, Dad?” I asked. “Wherever we end up,” he said. (2.3.17-18).

This sense of adventure and lack of roots seems unsettling at first, but the kids learn to love the new experiences, new thing to see and people to meet. Even when Jeannette eventually settles down in New York, she finds herself restless, needing to walk the streets and see new parts of the city. Rex and Rose Mary, despite their shortcomings, gave their children the gifts of open-mindedness, wanderlust and adventure — one of the most beautiful aspects of the story.

Without having seen the film yet, I think the casting is perfect, and as long as it captures the contradictory emotions the novel evokes, it will surely be a huge success.