The Liars' Club: A Memoir

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
Prizewinning poet and critic Mary Karr stretches the boundaries of memoir as she conjures up the terrors and joys of growing up in a swampy East Texas refinery town, at the epicenter of a family full of passionate, volatile attachments. 4 cassettes.

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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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Customer reviews

review by: kmills date: 2008-12-12 rating:
Better than Cherry
The Liar's Club is an excellent follow-up to Cherry. It deals with a promiscuous mother and an over-worked, undereducated father, and their struggles to raise a family.

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review by: date: 2008-11-17 rating:
This Book is Brilliant
Mary Karr's writing is beautifully poetic, simple, yet amazingly eloquent. This book is a treasure. Not only because it's so well-written, but because of the personal nature of it.
Karr doesn't allow me to feel like I'm imposing on her private memories. She is only being open and true to those memories. This approach only draws respect from the reader.

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review by: date: 2008-08-24 rating:
subject matter is just too disturbing
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.

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review by: a writer from NYC date: 2008-08-06 rating:
Liar to be sure
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


review by: Nicole Bradshaw date: 2008-07-28 rating:
Wonderful example of the genre - well written, entertaining, and meaningful
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.

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