Will I love The Liars' Club?

When I sent my agent the first few chapters of a memoir I was writing, she told me to begin a different project. “You’re not famous, and you don’t have a distinctive, unforgettable voice like Mary Karr.” Harsh words, but so true. No one writes like Mary Karr. Her narration of her hardscrabble, traumatic upbringing in West Texas combines harsh truth, horror, and humor. The book is evidence that real life can be far more fantastical and engaging than fiction. 

I always love writers who play with language, and Mary Karr is an expert at creating wild and giddy combinations… show more.

Yet another memoir that helped me heal my childhood trauma by showing me that I am not alone. There are other girls in this world who suffer, forgive, and continue loving even after going through their tumultuous childhoods with deeply dysfunctional family environments. We are survivors!

Also, Mary Karr is considered to be a master of memoir genre, and many aspiring writers read her books to learn the craft. I am in a group like that, and we often recommend new members of our group to learn to write by Mary Karr’s example.

In the voice of her little girl self, Karr masterfully tells of her fractured childhood. Innocent, vulnerable, and pure, Karr describes life with her sister, a mentally ill, alcoholic mother, and a mostly absent father as only a child can.

She is sure life isn’t supposed to be this way, but without any responsible adults, she doesn’t really know how it should be. It’s beautifully written. I found myself rereading sentences and underlining my favorites. I wanted to read everything about Mary Karr when I had finished. 

I love this book mainly because of her deeply flawed, hard-drinking dad, who still managed to impart wisdom and love. I couldn’t help wishing I’d had a dad like him.

When Karr grew up, she had her own substance abuse issues that she talked about in another memoir, but this book is my favorite because her family is so screwed up and yet so brave and so tough. To me, they epitomize all that is good and bad about the South.

Personally, I love lyrical, poetic language, and Karr’s writing is transcendent! This is a book that will be with… show more.

Mary Karr holds nothing back. She drives us through vast, windswept west Texas of my home to the piney woods 650 miles east with her remarkable, outrageous family. I felt the dust on my teeth and the tingle of danger just around the corner.

She manages to introduce us to her gun-toting mom and alcoholic dad without making them two-dimensional villains. The nuanced characters are clearly deeply flawed humans who are doing the best they can. I gasped, winced, laughed, and cried reading The Liar’s Club.

Her study of memory through the shadowy remembrances of childhood trauma echoed my own.… show more.

Queen of memoir, and the only American in this bouquet of books, yet with so many similarities to my other recommendations. Mary Karr’s childhood starts with the violence of her mother, flows through adoration of her father, anecdotalist and storyteller supreme in The Liars Club of his local bar. She explores the family dysfunction through colloquial prose that suits each situation perfectly. It evokes the American south of the early sixties, lived in a family as volatile as the events surrounding them, and the contrast of Colorado in 1963, where the family moved by accident, and revisiting Texas in 1980… show more.

This was the first memoir I read by a badass woman. It’s older but so worth going back to. Mary Karr’s command of the English language and her poetic sensibilities make reading about her tense childhood lyrical and dazzling. Her wit and gritty voice sing as she paints the devastating picture of her journey through childhood in a fractured, tormented family. 

I loved this book because it gave me permission to be just as bold in telling my story. She so bravely put herself out there and passed the bravery baton to me and everyone who reads her stunning story.

Talk about a strong Southern woman. Karr grew up in East Texas, the daughter of a hard-drinking father and a mother who painted and married her way through half a dozen husbands. Actually, seven husbands to be exact. Part memoir and part coming of age story, this raw rendering of a tough childhood is told with honesty and heart. It struck a chord with me that I’ll never forget.