With The Glass Castle movie being on the screens of many theaters all around the world, let’s take a look at the memoir that the English department has forced us Sophomores to read; the 2005 memoir The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.

Glass Castle tells about the childhood story of author Jeanette Walls. This book tells Walls’ poverty-stricken childhood, and it also briefly tells about her early adult life. This story tells everything from her experience with homelessness to how she saved up for college. This story is told in Walls’ perspective.

As I said before, this story tells everything from her early childhood up to her early adulthood, and her childhood life was poverty-stricken. The premise of the book makes an adventure that is interesting.

Among of many books that I’ve read, usually the atmosphere of the plots appear to be monotone, but this one different. This book is such an emotional rollercoaster. At one point, we have a thrilling story of Jeanette burned a hotel bathroom, and then we also have a sad story like when Jeanette’s father became so stressful that he became alcoholic. And that is one thing that makes this memoir an interesting read, and an exceptional one. I like how Walls put lots of emotions in a single book.

The other thing that I like about this book is the characters and their personalities. For example, we have Jeanette’s father who is very creative, but can be uncontrollable when he gets stressful. Then we have Jeanette’s mother, who is highly educated, but counter cultural, meaning, she lived her life different that everybody else, and many more. The characters’ personalities are so diverse, overall, and that is another thing that makes this book an exceptional memoir.

Now that I’ve talked the good things, let me tell you the thing that I don’t like about this book.  My major complain about this book is the plot holes. There are lots of plot holes during the course of the plot. For example, there are some points where one important character of the story is mentioned at one point, but then disappeared from the plot entirely until she then mentioned again at some point of the story afterwards. And that happens a lot in the book’s plot. It’s really annoying.  This problem also appears in many memoirs that I’ve read so far, and I don’t like it.

So, what can I say about this book? Well, as the title says, it’s not good, it’s exceptional. This book makes me look into the bigger picture of life, where life is not always stable, just like Jeanette Walls implied in this book. “…but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes” (21). Life is like a rollercoaster where there are ups and downs. The diversity of the atmospheres and the diversity of the characters’ personality makes this memoir a fully-packed adventure. My only complaint though, is the plot holes that I found to be annoying.

FINAL SCORE: 4.4/5