THE GLASS CASTLE

Years ago, I enjoyed Jeannette Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, where she recounted her life growing up with three siblings in a dysfunctional family with a brilliant, alcoholic father who dreamed of building a glass castle.  While home-schooling his children, teaching them geology and physics, their artistic mother taught them reading but had no maternal instinct or interest in rearing a family.  A very selfish person, a hoarder who was probably bi-polar, she categorized the children as Lori being the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, Brian the brave one, and Jeannette the hard worker.  

While enduring extreme poverty and an abnormal home life Jeannette was molested but was able to escape the environment at age 17, leaving West Virginia to join her older sister Lori in New York.  She began working and with scholarships, grants, and loans, she completed Barnard College and become a writer in the sophisticated world of New York magazine publishing, working at New York Magazine, living on Park Avenue, all the while always hiding her background, until one day she saw her parents in New York living as homeless people.  Despite their disadvantaged life, all the siblings moved to New York where her older sister worked in a law office to support herself as an artist, her brother became a policeman, but unfortunately, her younger sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

I am looking forward to seeing the soon-to-be-released movie starring Naomi Watts as her mother Rose Mary, Woody Harrelson as her father Rex, and Brie Larson as the adult Jeannette.