The Glass Castle
The New York Times Bestseller - Two Million Copies Sold
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- 42,00 kr
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- 42,00 kr
Publisher Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD
'Tragic and comic at the same time... an outrageous story, one that will break your heart' Sunday Independent
'A terrific story, grippingly told' Sunday Times
'I read The Glass Castle straight through in an evening, wearing an expression of slack-jawed amazement' Spectator
While Jeannette Walls was living on Park Avenue, covering the Academy Awards and attending black-tie parties at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her parents were squatting in an abandoned building on the Lower East Side.
Rex Walls, her father, was an ingenious adventurer and a hopeless alcoholic. Her mother was an artist who abhorred domestic routine and the chores of motherhood: 'Why should I cook a meal that will be gone in an hour when I can do a painting that will last forever?' Funny sad, quirky and loving, The Glass Castle is an almost incredible story of a nomadic, impoverished childhood.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BRIE LARSON, WOODY HARRELSON AND NAOMI WATTS
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Jeannette Walls’ coming-of-age memoir is both a dreamy exploration of childhood wonder and a character-driven tale of parental dysfunction. Walls’ concise tone makes the portrayal of her family especially vibrant and raw: her alcoholic father is a magical and destructive presence, while her free-spirited mother has no gift for domestic responsibility. As Walls matures, her parents’ idiosyncrasies lose their romanticism—she weaves together tales of homelessness, neglect, starry-eyed adventure and familial atonement, seamlessly shifting between childhood innocence and adult frustration. The Glass Castle is as spellbinding as it is harrowing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."
