Book Rec of the Day 1/31/2007

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”

Walls begins her memoir with a bang and doesn’t let up until the last page is turned. A gossip columnist, she worked for years keeping up appearances on Park Avenue, hoping her childhood wouldn’t catch up with her. Her memoir pulls back the curtain to reveal a bizarre life. Walls and her three siblings all managed to escape their bizarre West Virginia family and all moved to New York City, followed by their mother, who lives, by her own choice, as a squatter and sometime homeless person in the East Village.

THE GLASS CASTLE, by Jeannette Walls (Scribner, 2006)