A few weeks ago when my English teacher told us we had to pick a book to read and blog about it for homework, I’ll admit I was not too excited. I ended up picking The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. My mom had read it and constantly raved about it, so I thought I would give the book a chance. I’m glad I did; like my mom, I was enthralled from beginning to end.

The Glass Castle is a memoir of Walls’s childhood. She came from an impoverished and dysfunctional family with a negligent, unloving mother, a drunk and unemployed father and thankfully had three loyal siblings. The memoir starts with a startling memory of Walls’s at the age of three when she was cooking hot dogs and accidentally caught herself on fire. She spent six weeks in a hospital recovering from burns and skin grafts. If you’re flabbergasted about this, welcome to the club. From there, her adventures only get more insane.

Scattered throughout the memoir are “skedaddles,” or when her father would wake the family up in the middle of the night to move and evade tax collectors. Here was where I had moments of utter astonishment because for someone to leave their life in one town and move to another seems completely crazy. However, her family did it multiple times without hesitation.

As the book progresses and the children grow up, they realize their parents are not trying to keep them fed and clothed, and when they get the chance the children move out. However, the memoir ends in a funny and quirky way with the family laughing and retelling all of their adventures at Thanksgiving at Walls’s new home.

This memoir is insane. Reading how these people lived their lives, it opens your mind to how many people live to just try and scrape by. It is a memoir that will make you laugh out loud, infuriate you and bring tears to your eyes. If you are looking for a book to take you on an adventure, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is your book. I know I’m looking forward to the moment when I can quit blogging about this memoir for class and read it again and again for pure pleasure, anticipating each adventure and being amazed from her tales.