The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. The book illustrates her struggle through life and how her hardships shaped her into the person she is now. Jeanette is the second out of four children, she has an older sister, Lori, a younger brother, Brian, and a younger sister Maureen. The family is very dysfunctional, they are always doing the skedaddle and living in very poor conditions. They move all around Western America running from their father's mistakes. The way Jeanette's parents raised her, it took her a while to realize that the way she was living was not right, eventually her and Lori came up with a plan to get away from their toxic living conditions.

The Glass Castle has three pages in the beginning reserved for praise …show more content…
This is a true story so it can be inferred that she is writing from memory with the help of her family members.

Personal Response

I very much enjoyed The Glass Castle. I personally found the story and the character's struggles very relatable. The book was very enthralling, it was very hard to put down. In fact I actually finished the entire book in one sitting. This book really helped me put my own life into perspective, it made me reflect on my past and they obstacles I have faced. It helped me to realize that there's people out there who have had it worse than I have. The author definitely achieved her purpose of instilling hope and optimism into her audience.

It was very interesting to see how each obstacle shaped how they main character turned out in the end. It was also fun to see how she took her difficult experiences and her parents apathetic natures and turned them into something positive. Reading about how the author took every issue in stride with a positive attitude was really inspiring. This book really does help you learn how to persevere and keep going even when you feel like giving up because after all “If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim.”