The Liars' Club: A Memoir

I didn't just read this book. I recognized how good it is immediately. I was completely taken by surprise by the poetic and funny writing, outlining Mary's childhood in a dysfunctional family; so captivated that I found myself underlining passages and the wonderful way she describes everything, such as when her father came home. She didn't have to write that he was drunk. Instead, she writes, "Every now and then he'd come home lurching around like a train conductor." The image made me stop, laugh, and marvel, and it happened throughout the book. It is a true pleasure, such as when she said something to a neighbor after he got after her for shooting his son with a b-b gun. She writes, "And I came back with a reply that the aging mothers in that town still click their tongues about." This is the best memoir I have ever read, and I have ordered her sequels. I recommended this to my friends and the ones who bought it are raving about it.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Liars’ Club and will be moving to her next memoir of her series right away. I especially loved Karr’s detailed description of her own character as a child. She was authentic and brutally honest throughout. Her prose was at times a bit over the top, almost like too much spice in a recipe, but that’s just individual taste.

If you're into reading personal memoirs (we used to call them auto-biography, but that designation seems to be passé today), you already know that The Liars' Club is often mentioned in the reviews (by way of comparison). It is gritty, down-to-earth and I could tell the author put her heart and soul into its telling. Some of the telling seemed redundant at points and the detail about Southeast Texas & Louisiana life was overlong. However, I can't deny that the story itself was compelling (if not maddening in many places); also the same character that infuriated me throughout the telling, in the end, made me cry. It was sometimes also difficult to comprehend that so many awful incidents could happen to one child (does the title have an ironic relation to the telling of the story itself?); however, if there were no embellishments, then this truly is a story of grit, survival and sharing--so that anyone who had similar growing-up experiences could feel the freedom of not going through hell alone.

The majority of this memoir recounts a period in the author's childhood where she was around 5 years old, or thereabouts. As I was reading this book, I kept going around and around about how much of this is downright fabricated and in fact the work of a very skillful writer? Yet all the loose ends tie up at the end. Hmm, don't know what to think. It's not a pretty story and not for the faint of heart. I can be a pretty tough old bird, and some of her descriptions were downright shocking. This book was recommended to me by an author, and I was told it had one funny one-liner after the next, flat out great writing--read it immediately! I didn't want to tell this person, that I didn't laugh but once (the humor is dark) and I thought, Geez, this writer should be put in the corner with Salinger and Henry Miller (w/o all the four-letter obscenities) as far as salty prose goes. If that is your cup of tea, then give this book a try. After all is said and done, it is a page-turner, it keeps your interest, and even has a sort of moving twist at the end. It's a well-written book; the style will not be for everyone.