The Liars' Club: A Memoir
Mary Karr
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0143035746
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The dazzling, prizewinning, wickedly funny tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood—the book that sparked a renaissance in memoir
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
hide himself in her voluminous skirts. The old woman hefted up the weeping toddler girl, who quieted to snuffles. Mother collapsed in a ladderback side chair. She bent over her handbag with the court order unfolded on top and wept. The constable stood like a soldier under orders before the long silk draperies. “I knew then they were better off there,” Mother said. “With their daddy, I mean, and whoever the woman was. I didn’t even have beds for them. I didn’t have anybody to watch them while I
under her eyes with a napkin. “Your book changed my life,” she said. Maybe this sounds like a lot of bragging and big talk, but it’s a common enough phenomenon to warrant mention. So many readers have started crying when they meet me that I used to bring a box of tissues to book signings. I even cooked up a tensionbreaking joke about being such a disappointment in person. And when somebody said (as this woman did) that her psychiatrist had given her the book, I suggested she sue for malpractice
face in his neck the whole time, but I knew she was scudging sleep. She slept like a cat, and this was plenty of hoopla to keep her awake. The sheriff held my left hand. With my free one, I reached up and pinched her dirty ankle. Hard. She kicked out at me, then angled her foot up out of reach and snuggled back to her fake sleep on his chest. The highway patrolmen and firemen stood around with the blank heaviness of uninvited visitors who plan a long stay. Somebody had made a pot of coffee that
a devil’s trident belonging to a tiny little devil, I told Lecia, and she nearly wet her pants laughing. We clinked our glasses to staying in that hotel like princesses forever. Meanwhile, the waiters in their black clothes took our plates away and scrubbed crumbs off the table with silver-backed brushes they maneuvered using wrist movements too strict to seem natural. All this time, Daddy had fallen out of my head completely, which must have been Mother’s plan, of course, But when the fact of
it. They were faster than us by double, and way more nimble, not to mention that neither Joey nor Gordon had ever stuck a bit in a horse’s mouth. Lecia and I gave up helping pretty quick. We watched the men chase those horses for the better part of the morning. Gordon was lumbering and slow on his feet. Joey was quicker, but more and more hung over as time wore on. His blood alcohol level must have plummeted sharply at some point, for once he abruptly sat down in what turned out to have been a