Educated vs The Glass Castle: Which to Read First?
Educated and The Glass Castle are the two defining dysfunctional-family memoirs. Here's how they differ, what each does best, and which to read first.
By Natalie Osei
Two memoirs dominate the dysfunctional-family shelf, and readers constantly ask which to read: Tara Westover’s Educated (2018) and Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle (2005). Both are unforgettable true stories of growing up in chaos and poverty with brilliant, charismatic, and deeply harmful parents — and of the long, painful work of breaking free. So which is for you?
Key Differences at a Glance
| Educated | The Glass Castle | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Tara Westover | Jeannette Walls |
| Published | 2018 | 2005 |
| Setting | Survivalist Idaho mountainside | Nomadic American West and Appalachia |
| The parents | Fundamentalist, anti-government father | Brilliant alcoholic father, free-spirit mother |
| Core theme | Education as escape and self-creation | Love and loyalty amid neglect |
| Read first? | Either; intense | Either; gentler |
What Educated Is About
Educated is Tara Westover’s account of growing up in a survivalist Mormon family on an Idaho mountainside, where she never attended school, was kept from doctors, and worked in her father’s scrapyard under the shadow of his apocalyptic beliefs and a violent older brother. Teaching herself enough to enter college at seventeen, she travelled an astonishing distance — to Cambridge and a PhD — while the cost of that education was estrangement from much of her family. It is a propulsive, intellectually charged memoir about how learning can both liberate and isolate.
The Glass Castle: The Premise
The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls’s memoir of a nomadic, impoverished childhood shaped by her brilliant, alcoholic father — full of grand dreams like the glass castle he forever promised to build — and her free-spirited, neglectful artist mother. The family moved constantly, often going hungry, yet Walls renders her parents with startling warmth and complexity. It is a more forgiving, often poetic book about loving deeply flawed people and surviving them.
What Separates Them
The biggest difference is tone and intensity. Educated is the more harrowing and propulsive — its danger is visceral, and its emotional climaxes are wrenching. The Glass Castle is gentler and more nostalgic, finding beauty and humour even in deprivation. If you want raw intensity, Westover; if you want warmth amid the chaos, Walls.
A second is the central theme. Educated is fundamentally about education — how knowledge remakes a person and severs old ties. The Glass Castle is about love and loyalty — how a child reconciles adoring parents who failed her. The books pull at different emotional questions.
Then there is the parents. Westover’s father is rigid, ideological, and frightening; Walls’s father is a charming, self-destructive dreamer. Both portraits are unforgettable, but they evoke very different kinds of heartbreak.
Your Starting Point
Either order works, but The Glass Castle is the slightly gentler entry point, and as the earlier book it helped define the modern family memoir — many readers start there. Begin with Educated if the theme of self-education and intellectual awakening speaks to you most, or if you want the more intense, dramatic read first.
A practical tip: because both are emotionally demanding, you may not want to read them back to back. Many readers space them out, letting one settle before beginning the other.
A Note on Reading True Stories
One thing worth holding in mind: both are memoirs, shaped by memory and a single perspective, and both authors are candid about the limits of recollection. Westover footnotes where her account differs from her family’s; Walls writes with the gloss of a child’s adoring eye. That subjectivity is not a flaw but part of what makes these books so powerful — they are about how we narrate our own pasts as much as what happened. Readers who love this pair often go on to other landmark memoirs in the same vein, where an unreliable, deeply personal voice turns a hard childhood into art.
After These Two
Once you have read both, our best memoirs of all time roundup gathers more landmark life stories, from addiction and resilience to immigration and identity, for readers who want to keep going in this powerful genre, from addiction and resilience to immigration and identity.
Cutting to it: read The Glass Castle for the warmer, foundational family memoir and Educated for the more intense story of escape through learning — and you will have read the two definitive memoirs of surviving a difficult childhood.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I read Educated or The Glass Castle first?
Either works, but The Glass Castle is the slightly gentler entry point and came first (2005), so many readers start there. Educated (2018) is more intense and intellectually driven. If you want the foundational modern family memoir, begin with The Glass Castle; if the theme of education as escape draws you, start with Educated.
Which is better, Educated or The Glass Castle?
Both are acclaimed bestsellers and it largely comes down to taste. Educated is more propulsive and thematically focused on the transformative power of learning, with a dramatic arc from an off-grid Idaho childhood to a Cambridge PhD. The Glass Castle is warmer and more forgiving toward its flawed parents, with a nomadic, often poetic childhood. Many readers love both equally.
Are Educated and The Glass Castle similar?
Very. Both are bestselling memoirs of surviving a chaotic, impoverished childhood with charismatic but damaging parents who distrusted mainstream society, and both are ultimately about escaping that world and reckoning with the family left behind. They are the two titles most often recommended together in the genre.
