#4 on The New York Times’ list of The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years
The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of a hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation
“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet’s ear.” —Oprah.com
The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, 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 age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. 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.
WINNER PEN/Martha Albrand Award
“The essential American story . . . a beauty.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
“Astonishing . . . one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“This book is so good I thought about sending it out for a backup opinion. . . . It’s like finding Beethoven in Hoboken. To have a poet’s precision of language and a poet’s insight into people applied to one of the roughest, toughest, ugliest places in America is an astonishing event.” —Molly Ivins, The Nation
“9mm humor, gothic wit, and a stunning clarity of memory within a poet’s vision . . . Karr’s unerring scrutiny of her childhood delivers a story confoundingly real.” —The Boston Sunday Globe
“Overflows with sparkling wit and humor . . . Truth beats powerfully at the heart of this dazzling memoir.” —San Francisco Chronicle
"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 survived to write a drop-dead reply to the question, 'Ma, what was it like when you were a little girl?' " —Time
"This is the real deal; funny, painful, and hotter than Texas in September. This is what the memoir is supposed to be." —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly
"Elegaic and searching . . . her toughness of spirit, her poetry, her language, her very voice are the agents of rebirth in this difficult, hard-earned journey." —The New York Times Book Review
Mary Karr's poems and essays have won Pushcart prizes and have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Parnassus. She was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College, and is now the Jesse Truesdale Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse.
View titles by Mary Karr
#4 on The New York Times’ list of The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years
The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of a hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation
“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet’s ear.” —Oprah.com
The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, 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 age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. 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.
Awards
WINNER PEN/Martha Albrand Award
Reviews
“The essential American story . . . a beauty.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
“Astonishing . . . one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“This book is so good I thought about sending it out for a backup opinion. . . . It’s like finding Beethoven in Hoboken. To have a poet’s precision of language and a poet’s insight into people applied to one of the roughest, toughest, ugliest places in America is an astonishing event.” —Molly Ivins, The Nation
“9mm humor, gothic wit, and a stunning clarity of memory within a poet’s vision . . . Karr’s unerring scrutiny of her childhood delivers a story confoundingly real.” —The Boston Sunday Globe
“Overflows with sparkling wit and humor . . . Truth beats powerfully at the heart of this dazzling memoir.” —San Francisco Chronicle
"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 survived to write a drop-dead reply to the question, 'Ma, what was it like when you were a little girl?' " —Time
"This is the real deal; funny, painful, and hotter than Texas in September. This is what the memoir is supposed to be." —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly
"Elegaic and searching . . . her toughness of spirit, her poetry, her language, her very voice are the agents of rebirth in this difficult, hard-earned journey." —The New York Times Book Review
Mary Karr's poems and essays have won Pushcart prizes and have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Parnassus. She was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College, and is now the Jesse Truesdale Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse.
View titles by Mary Karr
