The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls's honest and straightforward narration of her memoir unfolds like a fictional cliffhanger. Her childhood stories are humorous and awe inspiring, while her tone becomes appropriately sober and sometimes angry when she recounts her teenage experience. Her alcoholic father's inability to keep a job and her artist mother's aversion to work mired the family with four children into extreme poverty, yet they were taught positive values and given a literary and scientific education. But listening to the final chapters is tedious, perhaps because Walls tells less about herself (a casual mention of her two husbands) and repeats much of what we already know about her homeless but intellectual parents. Still, this audiobook about child survival and success offers gems of insight. K.P. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine