Reading Order
The Glass Castle Reading Order
Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005) is the account of her nomadic, impoverished, profoundly unconventional childhood at the hands of her charismatic but deeply irresponsible parents — her alcoholic father Rex, who moved the family constantly to escape creditors and pursue failed mining schemes, and her bohemian artist mother Rose Mary, who prioritized her creative freedom over her children's basic needs — told with remarkable lack of bitterness or sentimentality.
Where to start
The Glass Castle
Complete The Glass Castle Book List
- 1Buy
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls·2005·The complete standalone memoir. Start here. - 2Buy
Half Broke Horses
Jeannette Walls·2009·Walls's 'true life novel' about her maternal grandmother Lily Casey Smith — the woman who raised her mother Rose Mary — told in the first person. Read second for the family backstory.
The Glass Castle — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 'glass castle' of the title?
The glass castle is the house Rex Walls promised to build for his family — an elaborate structure of glass, solar-powered and self-sustaining, that he had drawn detailed blueprints for — which became the symbol of both his grandiose vision and his fundamental unreliability. He promised it for years, began digging the foundation in Welch, West Virginia, and then used the excavated hole as a trash pit when money ran out. For Jeannette, the glass castle represents the essence of her relationship with her father: his extraordinary imagination and the dreams he inspired in her, and his complete inability to transform those dreams into reality or to prioritize his children's welfare over his own fantasies and addictions.
How does Walls avoid bitterness in writing about her parents?
Walls has said in interviews that she genuinely loves her parents and sees them as complex human beings rather than villains, which shapes the memoir's tone throughout. She presents both of them with their virtues intact: Rex is brilliant, funny, genuinely gifted at making children feel loved and at sparking their curiosity, and she clearly adored him as a child and continues to feel complicated love for him as an adult. Rose Mary is free-spirited, principled in her own way, and genuinely talented as a painter. The memoir never quite decides whether what they did was child abuse or an extreme version of bohemian child-rearing — Walls mostly lets the reader make that judgment while she herself maintains an affectionate if clear-eyed distance.
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