Great read, heart-wrenching story with some useful life lessons. I thought it was very believable and applaud Jeanette Walls for having the guts to write her story. What puzzles me though is that there is not more emotion written into the story. Maybe this was by Ms. Walls's design - perhaps we were supposed to be teed up for own emotions to take over versus spoon-fed. Or did Ms. Walls not want to reveal certain aspects of her family's lives to us? Or, could it be that Ms. Walls cannot bear to bring all that pain to the surface to write about it?

I kept wanting to read HOW painful some of those horrific things were, HOW excited she was when something good happened. The other burning questions I have are: WHY were her wacko parents the way they were (obviously there was some serious mental illness and alcoholism -- was it genetic?) What was her mom's family of origin like? We know her dad's situation was pretty dysfunctional. How has this type of upbringing affected the siblings emotionally? There are obviously some positive attributes but there must be quite a bit of emotional scarring that has either been -- or is yet to be -- dealt with.

Overall, I enjoyed Ms. Walls's style of writing. However, it was a little too reporter-like and didn't have enough psycho-analysis. I would definitely recommend it though.