by Jeannette Walls
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading. Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash. It had been months since I laid eyes on Mom, and when she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she’d see me and call out my name. I slid down in the seat and asked the driver to turn around and take me home to Park Avenue.”From here on, the story is one dysfunctional family rollercoaster ride. Jeanette tells her courageous tale of growing up with an alcoholic father who had grandiose, Ralph Kramdenesque schemes to find gold (and building her a glass castle, thus the title of the book) and her mother’s backwards methodology on almost every aspect of their lives. Everything - and I mean everything - could be twisted and contorted into something positive if seen through the distorted prism of Jeanette’s parents' eyes. Some parts of this will push you to the breaking point, making you want to shake some common sense into them. In other places, you can see that even though they were in desperate need of a psychiatric evaluation, they loved their kids
