Mosman Readers

"Book lovers never go to bed alone"

The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls

This book is written in the first person by Jeannette Walls who is a US writer and journalist and former gossip columnist.

The book starts when Jeannette is a child in the early 1960's and continues to the present day. The story chronicles life as part of a family that is constantly on the move with the family shuttling from Arizona, California, Battle Mountain, Nevada and Welch, West Virginia.

The father is an electrician finding work where he can but he is a dreamer with always the promise of a grand scheme that will make plenty of money and he can build 'A glass Castle' but this never eventuates. The mother is an artist, a writer, a dreamer and from a wealthy family, full of high ideals and against anything materialistic. There are four children and all cope in different ways to the situations they find themselves in and the conditions they live in, including homelessness.

As young children life is an adventure but as they grow older and more resilient they realise this nomadic life often with barely enough food and clothing to survive is not so ideal.

I enjoyed this with the vivid and often horrific descriptions of the places they stayed and how each individual family member coped or didn't with such an upbringing.

A great read and a good one for book club discussion !