The Glass Castle: Uncomfortable and Important
The Memoir That Is Honest About Ambivalence
Most memoirs about difficult childhoods resolve into gratitude or condemnation. The Glass Castle does neither. Jeannette Walls writes about her father Rex with genuine love and genuine fury at the same time, and she does not resolve that tension because it has not resolved. Her parents were charismatic, brilliant, reckless, and negligent, and she understood all of those things simultaneously. That honesty is what makes the book important and also what makes it uncomfortable.
Still thinking about which parent is harder to understand
"No child is responsible for the choices her parents make for her.
"Jeannette Walls
Reading The Glass Castle
Impact
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The book asks something difficult of the reader: to hold love and anger about the same people at the same time. It does not let you pick one side and stay there.