If You Like...The Glass Castle

More hard-hitting memoirs (and a few novels) about growing up in difficult circumstances.

Updated April 9, 2026
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Dana Hall School Dana Hall School Librarians
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If You Like...The Glass Castle

More hard-hitting memoirs (and a few novels) about growing up in difficult circumstances.

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All over but the shoutin'
Bragg, Rick
Paper Book
A haunting memoir by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, All Over but the Shoutin' presents a gripping account of people struggling to make sense and solidity of life's capricious promises. As he tells the wrenching story of his own family's life in the dirt-poor Alabama hills--where he got out,...
Angela's ashes : a memoir
McCourt, Frank
Paper Book
Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the...
Bastard out of Carolina
Allison, Dorothy
Paper Book
Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family-rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone,...
Crying in H Mart : a memoir
Zauner, Michelle
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American--"in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself" (NPR). * CELEBRATING...
Demon Copperhead
Kingsolver, Barbara
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century * An Oprah's Book Club Selection * An Instant New York Times Bestseller * An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * A #1 Washington Post...
Educated : a memoir
Westover, Tara
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University ...
First in the family : a story of survival, recovery, and the American dream
Hoppe, Jessica
Paper Book
An unflinching and intimate memoir of recovery by Jessica Hoppe, Latinx writer, advocate, and creator of NuevaYorka. "A powerful thunderclap of a memoir." --Lilliam Rivera, author of Dealing in Dreams A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024: Today.com, LupitaReads,...
Girl, interrupted
Kaysen, Susanna
Paper Book
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and...
The glass castle : a memoir
Walls, Jeannette
Paper Book
In the tradition of Mary Karr's The Liars' Club and Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shouting, Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family.
Half broke horses : a true-life novel
Walls, Jeannette.
Paper Book
From the author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon--"Walls vividly depicts her astonishing, resilient grandmother with a lightness of touch that is plainspoken yet heartfelt" (Chicago Tribune). Half Broke Horses has transfixed readers everywhere. "Those...
The Liars' Club : a memoir
Karr, Mary.
Paper Book
"Astonishing...one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"Mary Karr's God-awful childhood has a calamitous appeal...the choice in the book is between howling misery and howling laughter, and the reader veers toward laughter. Karr has...
Oranges are not the only fruit
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
"To read Jeanette Winterson is to love her."--O, the Oprah Magazine A beloved contemporary feminist classic and pioneering work of autofiction--a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl's quirky passage into adulthood Jeanette Winterson's extraordinary career...
Running with scissors : a memoir
Burroughs, Augusten.
Paper Book
The #1 "New York Times "Bestseller An "Entertainment Weekly" Top Ten Book of the Year Now a Major Motion Picture"" "Running with Scissors" is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking...
A tree grows in Brooklyn : a novel
Smith, Betty
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg,...
Why be happy when you could be normal?
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller: The "magnificent" memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time--"A tour de force of literature and love" (Vogue). One of the New York Times' "50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years" Jeanette Winterson's bold and...
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