“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet’s ear.” –Oprah.com The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation.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 … 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.
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An excellent memoir about a crazy family and how Mary and her sister survived.
The book was funny and very entertaining. I enjoy her writing. There is honesty and passion in her words.
Slow developing, I couldn’t get interested enough to finish it. Didn’t seem to be going anywhere
Mary Karr started the genre of Dysfunctional Family Memoir. Who knew that crazy childhoods could be so funny? She has other memoirs that cover other chapters in her life that I also heartily recommend.
Funny, poignant, sweet, and sad. A very well written memoir.
History not accurate. She mixed up her hurricanes and their path and timing. Characterizations are broadly funny, but I lived in the area in the timeframe and worked in a refinery and found it difficult to agree with many of her viewpoints on refinery workers.
Excellent read that is very troubling and inspiring at the same time! Told with honesty and a sense of humor that we can all survive our crazy and sometimes troubled childhood.
Easy to read. Real emotions throughout.
A little too much information
The writing is more than clever, descriptively perfect.
A very hard but interesting memoir.
One of those books you’ll wish you’d written yourself. Very fine!
This book kept me engaged all the way through. The author described her family’s dysfunction with humor and introspection.
IT WAS SAD AND YET VERY MUCH A STORY OF TRUE LIFE EXPERIENCE WITH A THOUGHTFUL ENDING.
Disappointing ending. Otherwise good
I suppose this book is so dear to me because it let me know
I wasn’t the only one that ever had a comic/tragic childhood. The more I talked about this book the more comic/tragic survivors I met just like me that that grew up in the “golden triangle” of Texas. Just knowing that makes me sad and joyous for all of us.
A heart rendering story of a girl’s childhood in an alcoholic family which includes a mother who is mentally unstable, to say the least. It’s the story of one person’s survival in a dysfunctional family with no holds barred. Told with a sense of humor probably to mask the tragedy.
Loved the way Mary Karr tells the story of a young girl growing up in a
disfunctional family.
What a crazy world. An argument for some regulation
Brilliant writing about a heartbreakingly awful childhood.