The glass castle: a memoir

for daring to strike her own grandmother, and Brian for being such a pussy and starting the whole thing. I ...

"Don't think about things like that," Lori told me. "It'll make you crazy." And so I put it out of my ...

Mom and Dad wanted outdoor space we could call our own, so they decided to buy. Since we had no money ...

We followed the road almost to the end, where Dad pointed up at our new house. "Well, kids, welcome to Ninet ...

fifty dollars a month. If we could make the payments on time, we'd own the place outright in under ...

hanging lengths of pipe from the ceiling with wires. Mom and Dad took over the room with the ...

wicked electric shock if we touched any damp or metallic surface in the room. The first time I got zapp ...

and they had the armholes in the right places. Mom also tried to make the house cheerful. She decorated ...

SEEING AS HOW WELCH was our new home, Brian and I figured we'd make the best of it. Dad had shown us the spo ...

This rat was not just eating the sugar. He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his f ...

afternoon we heard the sound of gunshots. Mr. Freeman, who lived next door, had seen the rat ha ...

I kept looking for other ways to make improvements. One day Dad brought home a five-gallon ...

would have a cheerful yellow house. But neither Mom nor Dad nor Brian nor Lori nor ...

and let me join a team if they were short a player. The better-off folk of Welch had not exactly floc ...

date, and I'd have to go down and explain to him that the other kids had played a trick on him and that ...

from school, when I told her we'd lived for a while in California, she lit up. She said her mam ...

special chicken rolls." She turned to me. "You know how to pick a chicken clean?" "I sure d ...

I told her and Kathy about life in California. It quickly became clear they had no interest in desert mi ...

Whatever the reason, it seemed that just about everyone in Welch—men, women, boys, girls—liked to fight. Th ...

tank parked next to the armory. Ernie Goad appeared and began throwing rocks at me and yelling that the ...