The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Over 260 Weeks on Bestseller List: This memoir spent more than five years on The New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover alone, and an astounding 440 weeks on the paperback nonfiction list until October 2018! The book became such a phenomenon that it sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and was translated into 31 languages.

Shocking Opening Scene: The memoir begins with an unforgettable image of Jeannette, dressed for a fancy Manhattan party in a taxi, spotting her mother digging through a dumpster on the street. This jarring contrast between her successful life and her mother’s homelessness sets the tone for the entire story and actually happened in real life.

Written in Six Weeks: After struggling with the story for 25 years and writing many versions she threw away, Walls finally wrote the first draft of The Glass Castle in just six weeks, working weekends from 7:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. However, she then spent three to four years rewriting and perfecting it.

Threatened Into Telling Her Story: Jeannette was essentially forced to write this memoir when the Church of Scientology, angry about a negative article she’d written, investigated her background and threatened to expose her parents’ homelessness. A Village Voice cartoonist also planned to reveal her parents as squatters in his cartoon, pushing her to finally tell her own story.

Her Father Died Before Publication: Rex Walls, Jeannette’s charismatic but alcoholic father, died of a heart attack in 1994, more than a decade before the memoir was published in 2005. He never got to see the book that would immortalize both his failures and his dreams, including his promise to build the titular glass castle.

Mother Lives With Her Now: Rose Mary Walls, Jeannette’s free-spirited artist mother who chose homelessness as an “adventure,” now lives in her own cottage on Jeannette’s Virginia farm with her husband. Even today, Rose Mary makes no apologies for how she raised her children, insisting they had “a more interesting life” with “experiences nobody else had.”

Burned at Age Three: The memoir opens with one of Jeannette’s earliest memories of cooking hot dogs by herself at age three when her dress caught fire, resulting in severe burns requiring skin grafts on her stomach, ribs, and chest. Her father then kidnapped her from the hospital to avoid paying the medical bills, calling it checking out “Rex Walls style.”

Controversial in Schools: Despite its critical acclaim, The Glass Castle was listed as the ninth most challenged book in 2012 by the Office for Intellectual Freedom. It was the seventeenth most banned book between 2010 and 2019 due to offensive language and sexually explicit content, sparking heated debates in school districts across North America.

Became Number One After Film Release: While the book peaked at number 10 on The New York Times bestseller list in 2006, it surged back to the number one spot for paperback nonfiction in 2017 following the film adaptation’s release, holding that position for 15 weeks and introducing the story to an entirely new generation.

Compared to Charles Dickens: Critics were so impressed by Walls' vivid depiction of poverty and resilience that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution compared her to the legendary Charles Dickens. They wrote that his "scenes of poverty and hardship are no more audacious and no more provocative than those in the pages of this stunning memoir."

Film Starred Oscar Winners: The 2017 film adaptation brought together an impressive cast including Brie Larson (who won an Oscar for Room) as Jeannette, Woody Harrelson as Rex, and Naomi Watts as Rose Mary. Filming actually took place in Welch, West Virginia, the real town where the Walls family lived in extreme poverty, and Walls herself said Harrelson “nailed” her father’s portrayal down to his body language.