Rating: 
Summary: Not a sequel to The Liar's Club
Review: "The Liars' Club" is such a beautiful, touching, and profound memoir that it takes your breath away. Clearly, such a work is a hard "act" to follow. Unfortunately, this has been represented as a sequel to "The Liars' Club" setting the expectations bar very high. While this book is ok, it comes as a disappointment in light of the expectations that have been established by the hype.First, it is important to note that this really isn't a sequel. "The Liars' Club" was a poignant description of her parents tumultuous marriage as viewed through the eyes of a child, and a heart wrenching tribute to her father. Her parents are decidedly in the background in "Cherry" with her father being no more than a footnote. However, Karr's mother plays a sympathetic supporting role as a farsighted, sensitive and progressive, albeit eccentric, mother for an adolescent girl. Unlike her former memoir, "Cherry" is primarily about Mary Karr and about her angst as a teenager and her distinctive transformation as an adolescent in light of a highly untraditional and unorthodox upbringing in a decidedly traditional blue collar town. I found Karr's depiction of the town's relative tolerance of individual idiosyncracies particularly gratifying in light of the erroneous stereotypes often attributed to working class communities and Texas as a whole. Karr offers important, albeit subtle, socioeconomic observations on the disenfranchisement of the working class, particularly in light of the disillusionment and subsequent changes in social mores which arose during the Vietnam War era (though those social structures were more important to the middle class as Karr's representation of the working class suggests). However, some of the recollections seemed disjointed, or out of focus, perhaps intentionally in her depiction of the search for purpose in an often drug induced haze. I think the reaction to this book will definitely be mixed. It would probably have been better received if it preceded "The Liars' Club" or if the reader didn't know they were written by the same author.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully Written Memoirs of an Excrutiating Adolescence
Review: Unbelievable pain scalds almost every sentence of this powerful autobiography of growing up an intelligent outsider in a small Texas town (Leechfield -- "mind-crushing atmosphere of sameness"). You will find yourself stunned by the challenging circumstances of Professor Karr's teenage years, and rooting for her to find her grounding. The superb writing would be enough to attract any reader, even though it features a frankness and roughness of tone that I normally condemn. In this case, the language is warranted in portraying the emotional reality of Professor Karr's life. It gives you access to her mostly uncensored thinking in a way that captures the moment for all time. For example, in describing her forthcoming trip to California she says, "[Y]ou are still immortal, and that coast . . . is beckoning you with invisible fingers of hashish smoke." Ms. Karr managed to be an outsider in more ways that most can imagine. She was an intelligent female in a town that did not favor intelligence. Her family was about as unconventional as you can imagine ("Mother also had a secret history of hasty marriages and equally hasty dissolutions." -- 7 marriages in all, including two to Ms. Karr's daddy; her daddy drank and kept a mistress who was later shot and killed by her husband.). She was an unattractive tomboy who had a strong sexual drive from a young age. She frequently misbehaved in ways that caused people to become very uncomfortable (such as abusing people verbally in explicitly profane ways, riding topless on her bicycle when she was 11, and going noticeably braless in high school). As a result, she had a hard time making and keeping friends. "Other girls from families as weird as mine managed to overcome their origins . . . . Without the company of other girls, the summer became the first of many vacant summers." Her mother and daddy had a habit of just disappearing at night to show up days later with various lame excuses. She and her sister would steal her daddy's truck at 13 and drive around looking for one or both of their parents. As a result, "I was growing into a worrier, a world-class insomniac, what one friend would later describe as a grief-seeking missile." Not surprisingly, she was soon experimenting with almost every sort of drug and way of partying that you can imagine . . . looking to dull or avoid the pain. These experiences and their consequences are described in compelling detail in the book. Not too many people cut her any slack, and she was always surprised when someone tried to help her. Between the vividness of her experiences and the beauty of the writing, this book is likely to become a classic among young people, especially young women, and those who want to understand them better. After reading the book, I gave my teenage daughter a big hug and thanked our lucky stars that she is having an easier time than Professor Karr did. After you finish this book, consider how you can create more stability and kindness for someone in your family who really needs them. Be there.
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT!
Review: The Liar's Club was one of the most poignant, funny, shocking, stunningly written memoirs ever. Cherry continues where Liar's Club left off, and every single sentence is an incredible work of poetic mastery. Mary's dangerously eccentric family (dysfunctional doesn't even BEGIN to describe this odd assortment of people), and her poisonous, dead-end hometown of Leechfield return - but Mary's coming-of-age is the focus in Cherry. The fact that this bizarre family and ugly little town helped to create a author who works magic with the written word is amazing! If you've read The Liar's Club, you MUST read Cherry. If you missed The Liar's Club, start with it and I promise you'll want to read this new one also.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars isn't enough. It deserves its own constellation.
Review: As an avid fan of Ms. Karr's previous book, The Liar's Club, I wasn't sure she would maintain an equally brilliant style in her next "sequel." But does she deliver! Her wit and use of language is nothing less than stunning. Mary Karr is a gift, a rare and genuine voice to which I long to return again and then again. We are a lucky generation to be given such a precise compass by which to imaginatively gauge our own psychological terrain. This is the language of genius played out on a wicked landscape made new in the nuanced prose of a master.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book was so powerfull especially as me bieng a teenager myslef it shows how how she deals with her teenage years and etc. And she still goes on. I highly recommend this book for any teenager who loves to read
Rating:
Summary: Angst of adolescence with a hard-edged sense of humor
Review: Mary Karr is a fine writer. When I read her memoir, "The Liar's
Club" about her rough and tumble childhood in a working class
Texas town, I loved every word. That's why I was so anxious to read
this sequel, which deals with her adolescence. There are definitely
some differences between the two books, but I wasn't
disappointed.
The voice of the young Mary Karr comes through loud
and clear. It's honest and foul-mouthed and disrespectful. It's a
sharp-tongued blade that dares to illuminate the angst of adolescence
with a hard-edged sense of humor. And yet it brings the bittersweet
sadness of disappointments and awakenings to the page. The reader
cannot help but love her. This book tells her story from age 11
through 17. It's about her friendships and boyfriends and coming of
age. As it takes place in the 1970s, there are a lot of drugs. Mary
is sent to the principal's office for not wearing a bra. Mary hangs
out with long-haired surfers and does drugs. Mary gets arrested.
Mary's sister takes a different path than Mary. In this book, Mary's
parents take a back seat to the peer group. The story of their
tumultuous marriage, psychological breakdowns and heavy drinking has
been explored in "The Liar's Club". By this book their
eccentricities and foibles are already accepted as givens. Again,
their love shines through. I'm glad that Ms. Karr decided to
continue her story. It might have been a little more episodic than
the first book and the events not as traumatic. But the strength of
her writing is not in the events, but in her view of them. And that
is why I enjoyed this book so much. The book ends when Mary is 17.
Hopefully, they'll be yet another book that will follow her through
the years.
Rating:
Summary: Never read Liars Club but Ms. Karr is brillant!
Review: I've never read Liars Club. In fact I'd never even heard of Mary Karr, I found Cherry in a discount book section at a safeway. I needed somthing to read, it had a colorful cover. I asked my mother to buy it. I am so thankful that my mother doesn't censor what I read or she would have exploded with in the second paragraph. I'm in awe at how Ms. Karr can say pu**y and f**** and loads of other crude language and still make it sound beautifuly poetic. The story itself moves along steadily and the only time I got even remotely bored was during the last two chapters. I found the drug enduced narration hard to follow, and it made me sleepy.
Rating:
Summary: Sally the Siamese Cat
Review: As a cat lover, my favorite passage in Mary Karr's novel Cherry is her description of how she dressed her Siamese cat Sally in her doll's clothes:
"The times I jammed that cat into lace pinafore, she'd never once bit or scratched me. Oh she'd struggle. I could feel her sinews tighten in my hand. Only once did she lose her temper though. When I'd tied her into my baby carriage with an elaborate web of Christmas ribbon, she managed to gnaw through her restraints and wound up under an azalea bush hissing in her white bonnet."
I did the same thing as a child, and this passage rings so true, as do all of Mary's descriptions of growing up too fast in the Sixties and Seventies. She is courageous to present her past so honestly, as many of us who grew up in that era often lie about our younger days! I am inspired by the fact that she was able to emerge from the wild background described in both her novels and write so compellingly about her life. I hope to see more from her in the book stores.
Rating:
Summary: Touching remembrance
Review: A touching remembrance of a 1970s adolescence. Karr made me both want to go back to the innocence and exploration and made me so relieved to be independent and no longer affected on a daily basis by the disfunctioning parental bodies. Startlingly honest, Karr makes one feel the joys and pains of adolescence as if they were currently going through it. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Great story-telling! I saw myself in her!
Review: As a young woman I could relate to the many stories that Mary Karr bought to mind. The pressures of being a young girl and to be accepted. I noticed the reviews for this book were not the best, but I really think any young girl should give this a chance. This book is a good example of identifying ones self. the only part I was not real crazy about was that it had a whole section that concentrated on her drug life which wasnt easy for me to identify with. I really believe someone in their teens or middle twenties should consider this book
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