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Summary: Great, even if you don't like memoirs
Review: A friend gave me this book, saying she had liked it but wasn't crazy about confessional memoirs. The Liar's Club may fit that description, but don't be put off, because it's absolutely fantastic. Mary Karr's writing routinely verges on prose-poetry and is, despite its dark subject matter, funny enough to make you laugh out loud. Then, once you're laughing, she turns around and hits you with something so brutal that you're caught up short. I did find myself wondering, as I'm sure others have, whether some embroidery may have been involved in the author's crystal-clear recollections of events long past. She appears to have kept copious journals, but still, you wonder how anyone could have gotten so much detail down with such precision, especially as a child. Then again, maybe she's a hyper-sensitive person with a photographic memory. Ultimately I didn't care if parts of it were embellished a bit. She's such a good writer that if this depiction of events captures the truth of her childhood, more power to her. My main reaction was a weirdly worshipful desire to locate Ms. Karr and make her tell me more stories, the ones that didn't make it into this book. (Actually, I'd be surprised if this has not happened to her.) This book pulls you in. It's funny, poignant, shocking, memorable. I give it five richly deserved stars.
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Summary: By any measure, this is a great book.
Review: You'll have to search the bookshelves of American literature long and hard to find a better wordsmith than Mary Karr. An entertaining and captivating story added to Karr's exceptional writing ability, places LIAR'S CLUB atop the must-read list of any book lover.
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Summary: ON THE SAME LEVEL AS "SPEAK, MEMORY"
Review: Not since I read Nabokov's "Speak, Memory" have I been so moved by a memoir. Karr should be recognized as one of the most intelligent authors of the late 20th Century. A must-have book for memoir enthusiasts. Truly engaging!
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Summary: Too many "pissed off"s, "s***s," and "f***s"
Review: Mary Karr has a story here begging to be told. She does know how to structure an anecdote and doesn't seem restricted by a need to literally reconstruct what happened. But in addition to a self-help confessional, a reader is entitled to some artistry which in this case should have included appropriate language. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family myself, I know the language used by poor white trash just as Mary Karr does. But I do not agree that people who are angry, irritated, irate, or upset should always be depicted as "pissed off." Surely a good writer ought to have a more extensive vocabulary to bring to bear on true emotion, and a good editor ought to help that writer realize something more elevated than what we have here. This is essentially wallowing in low-class, trashy behavior, a type of infantile fecal-smearing act meant to attract attention. This reader hopes that re-telling this story helped the author to come to grips with it; the presentation offered little more than repulsion to this reader. The book doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as "Angela's Ashes."
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Summary: Brilliant at the start, merely interesting later on.
Review: I was stunned after ten pages of this book, because I never knew that language could be so beautiful! Unfortunately that effect wore off quickly and I was left reading the tale purely for its content value. Which is pretty high, as the author's childhood is by no means typical. The question "How the hell did that happen to her?" is one that often comes to mind. If you are interested in humans and human experiences of life (this one being small-town American), read this. It's a breezily fresh perspective on the morasse of life we've been thrust into.
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Summary: Why the Liar's Club is My Favorite Book
Review: Mary Karr's The Liar's Club was given to me by my sister. It was her favorite book, and has now become mine. Karr recounts her out-of-the-ordinary childhood with unbelievable precision. The writing style grabs the hand of the reader and guides them along this trip with unique humor and a familiar Selinger-esq syntax. The reader begins to feel as if Karr's sister is his/her own, in addition to the many sparatic road trips, breakdowns, and attempted murders. Once you have experienced Karr's history and insane family, held together only by love, you will never look at your own life the same way.
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Summary: extraordinary
Review: I grew up with Mary, I was even in the same third grade class. While I knew her mother to be "eccentric", I never realized what a traumatic childhood she had! I also had a traumatic childhood due to alcoholism. Mary has the ability to write about her experiences with humor. I really enjoyed this book and was very happy for Mary that it became a best seller. Glad that people from all over could identify with the story. The book brought back a lot of memories of places I had forgotten about. I'm looking forward to her new book "Cherry".
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Summary: This book will help you appreciate the oddity of life!
Review: A friend of mine turned me on to this book, and I went with her to hear Mary Karr read passages from it. As a result, her voice stays with me when I read this book. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a woman that I worked with at the time grew up with Mary Karr. "Van Louise" told me that it is all true. In some odd way, this book and the circumstances that arose during my time with it have made me appreciate how life is never tidy, and how everyone has a story. I have never been a fan of non-fiction or memoirs, but this book proved to me that life is an incredible journey that deserves to shared. I have since bought copies of this book for my mother-in-law and other loved ones. I recommend this book to anyone I know looking for a "great read".
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Summary: "Exposing the lies"
Review: "The Liars Club" is one of the most touching and simultaneously disturbing books I've read in quite awhile. In an unforgettable series of memoirs, Mary Karr has succeeded in retelling the astonishing events of her past in an earnest, heartfelt manner. Through her thorough recount, she is able to deliver a compassionate, and at times alarming, description of what it's like to love and be loved, to lie and be lied to. Mary Karr's voice shines as she describes her childhood from the witty, honest view of a young girl. Virtually all of her enthralling recollections are immersed in a unique humor that makes this book hilarious in a backwards way: "Your mother's threat of homicide--however unlikely she tries to make it sound--will flat dampen down your spirits." By using the fiery, blunt style Mary Karr has chosen as her own, she is able to throw the reader into her memories with great intensity: "Mother is reaching over for the steering wheel, locking onto it with her knuckles tight. The car jumps to the side and skips up onto the sidewalk. She's trying to take us over the edge." It's these two driving forces, humor and sharp honesty, that keep the reader from putting this book down. "The Liars' Club" is a poignant story of an ordinary child living in an extraordinary world. Mary Karr's witty commentary and intimate analysis of such a remarkable life make this book a very worthwhile read. Her compelling story should be considered as reading material for anyone striving to understand the value of his or her childhood.
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Summary: One True Thing in the Liar's Club by Mary Karr
Review: "I never knew despair could lie." (p. 320). Truth comes in waves in Mary Karr's The Liar's Club. Like the clouds of locusts, the hurricanes, the barren western Texas landscape and its enormously vast skyline, truth is ladeled out in blasts of wind, the crank of oil rigs, the smell of DDT, and generous scoops of Easy Perm. The title of this book is not only ironic, but visionary because the force of resistance to the truth is palpable in the lives of the people who forge their own survival in reaction to it. Truth touches them everywhere, but they don't want to feel it or to see it. It reaches out to them and they avoid it. It comes to them in the dark and gropes for them, stumbling over trash cans and littered yards. Only the oddball memories of a child are able to fuse together a tunnel of meaning at the end of which we can gather the hazy, purplish light of truth. The reigning conceit is that despair never lies. If that is true, then this book is a testimony to science. Despair litters the pages of Karr's work. It empties itself into every nook and cranny of her childhood. Her mother's case of Nervous is euphemistic and foreshadows her impending psychotic episode with fire and lipstick. Self-loathing seems to be a theme for this family, so that her mother's truth is, finally, an attempt to "scrub herself out" in every mirror of the house (p. 149). Her father's truth is no less ironic. The stories he telles are stories that make misery and cruelty sound funny. It is his way of not allowing himself to feel victimized by his circumstances or the course of his life. His truth is not to let life make you feel like a victim and he teaches that skill to his daughter so that she, too, will have the tools to survive the blasts of other people's craziness. He wasn't naive about life, but he tried to be prepared. He was reliable and even though "no technical truth" was ever told in his stories at the Liar's Club, "he knew how to be believed." (p. 14,15). The truth of knowing how to be believed is--when it comes to dealing with despair--more accurate than the facts themselves. Despair and misery are the theme of this book. They are what constitute its "truth," if that is what you are looking for. More than truth in any abstract or even statistical sense, this book tells the story of surviving human suffering and weakness. It's a guidebook for people who think they have lost their way in life and to their surprise, realize that every detour, every account of misery and pain, leads somewhere. The fact that despair does indeed lie is the truth at the core of Karr's piece. Knowing when to trust hope and when not to; knowing when to trust or believe the despair you feel and experience, and when not to is the great "truth" of this book. She shatters our ideology that misery is more honest than hope. Her truth is that believing in despair may unnecessarily create lunatics. by Randi Quanbeck
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