by Mary Karr
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Product Description
When it was published in 1995, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, as well as bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new introduction that discusses her memoir’s impact on her family, this unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable” (USA Today) today as it ever was.
Amazon.com Review
In this funny, razor-edged memoir, Mary Karr, a prize-winning poet and critic, looks back at her upbringing in a swampy East Texas refinery town with a volatile, defiantly loving family. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis; a fist-swinging father who spun tales with his cronies--dubbed the Liars' Club; and a neighborhood rape when she was eight. An inheritance was squandered, endless bottles emptied, and guns leveled at the deserving and undeserving. With a raw authenticity stripped of self-pity and a poet's eye for the lyrical detail, Karr shows us a "terrific family of liars and drunks ... redeemed by a slow unearthing of truth."
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 subject matter is just too disturbing, 2008-08-24
If you are a fan of child rape then this is the book for you. Otherwise you may want to try something a little lighter. Briged Jones Diary is good for a few laughs. Anything by Terry Pratchett is amusing.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Liar to be sure, 2008-08-06
Mary Karr shhots from the hip, creating a superficial narrative that expounds a kind of confession. People like this-- that is, average readers. Set out in the world she claims, in Book World(2008) Bill Matthews beat brain cancer by having a heart atack-- (lie) She also misspeaks regarding Keats(Book World 2008)-(liar) As I said, she shoots from the hip-- in no way is an academic, does not check her sources, writes anything she wants, because, perhaps, she has branded herself a liar already. Her work is, frankly, weak, poems and prose. Those of you who "love" it should reach higher in regrd to your reading. Or not. Stay on the low plain of writing like Mary Karr's.From what Kevin saio
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful example of the genre - well written, entertaining, and meaningful, 2008-07-28
I just finished reading this book, and it is one of the most un-put-downable memoirs I have ever read. Karr grew up in the lower middle class of a depressing town in Texas. The story revolves around her family life as a very young girl - ages 6 to 9 or so. What first strikes you is Karr's voice. Tomboyish, able to hold a grudge, thirsty for love, stubborn as a mule, Karr unflinchingly admits her own foibles and those of others, but also cuts through the novel's events to the beating, loving heart of her family.
Her alcoholic/manic depressive mother is beautiful and educated in a town where neither attribute was common. Her father, a working man with a talent for bombast, dotes on both his children, but particularly on Karr, whom he dubs "Pokey." After her mother leaves her father, Karr and her sister choose to live with her mother, more out of a sense of feeling obligated to protect her from herself than anything else.
Eventually, the family finds its way back together again, and the story is satisfyingly whole. Though few doubt that at least some of a memoirist's work must be imagination (Who among us can remember such detail about their life as a 7-year-old?), Karr has a knack for taking down some of her more relatable thoughts and experiences. The people she writes about, their conversations, their weaknesses, have the ring of universality.
Worth reading, and one of the best examples of the genre I've come across in a while.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Is it any wonder?, 2008-07-17
I read this book when it was first published; and re-read it this week for a book club discussion of "reader's choice." Mary Karr is a poet with a hard-knock childhood. Is it any wonder she wrote a memoir that is beyond belief in every sense? The sentences jump off the page. Oh, that I could write like this.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Wow!!, 2008-07-04
Mary Karr is that most exceptional of non-fiction writers: one who went through exceptional tragic / comic circumstantial experiences as a child; who absolutely remembers them AND how she felt as if they were yesterday; and who grew up to become a literature professor who can write!! Wow! That's the only word for the book. I have never read an autobiography remotely like it.
In simple terms, Mary, the younger of two sisters, was the daughter of a tough, take-no-prisoners, blue collar oil refinery worker Father and an ethereal, arts and drame culture-oriented Mother with her heart still in New York or Paris but with obligations in backwater southeast Texas. What a situation, and, to my amazement ... she remembers it all, seemingly day-by-day.
The Liar's Club (her small child's view of hew dad and his friends and their times in the bar) is a memoir from her earlest years through late childhood (her later book Cherry carries the story forward through teenage years). You'll both laugh histerically and cry at the heartbreaking situations for the little girl and the family trying to keep it all together. Wow! Highly recommended!
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