Jeannette Walls

She is the narrator and main character of the story. She retells the events of her life living with her careless and yet loving parents.

Jeannette is a daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls, the second oldest of four siblings in the Walls family. She is practical, intelligent and attentive. She tries to adhere to rules unlike her mother, but at the same time, she remains adventurous as in childhood. Jeanette respect and idealizes her father, and struggles to reconcile this idealized image with Dad’s unreasonable mistakes.

Finally, she comes to the decision that she must escape from her family and she moves to New York. She is a successful journalist, who earns well and looks confident. Jeannette is going to marry financial analyst David. But during the supper in a luxurious restaurant, Jeannette asks the waiter to wrap her a half-eaten dish. And she also avoids telling the truth about the way of life of her parents. But once the past breaks into the life of the young journalist, and then she has to plunge into the atmosphere of poverty and uncertainty in the future.

She never judges her parents, but as an adult, her relationship with them remains doubtful: from the one hand, she likes them, but on the other hand, she cannot continue to live the way they do.

Jeannette has always had a place for modest joy, dreams, and games, but happiness is not such a thing. However, the girl did not just grow up; she was able to get out of the quagmire, achieved success in the professional field and created a full-fledged family, one that she had never had before.