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Feb 11, 2008

Heather rated it:

Much praise has been written about Mary Karr's uniqe poetic voice. But, honestly? I found very little that was "special" about Mary Karr. Her writing style seems jarring; she has no problem jumping around in time in the middle of a paragraph. I also found it difficult to be compelled with her story. It was a story about growing up poor in a industrial town in Texas. I bet 30 other kids from that same town could have written a very similar book. Her prose was bland and it was evident th More...

7 comments like (12 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2011

Emily rated it:

I had heard a great deal about Mary Karr's _The Liars' Club_ before I read it. _The Liars' Club_ is considered one of the groundbreaking books in the current memoir movement, and there is much for a writer to learn from it, both things to steal and things to avoid.

To steal, of course, are the humor and honesty. One of my favorite moments occurs when Karr explains that she and her sister misheard the phrase "It ain't the heat, it's the humidity" for years, believing people More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2009

Dorothea rated it:

Well hot damn and hallelujah! Something good has come out of Texas after all!

The Liars' Club is Mary Karr's memoir. She is fore mostly, a poet. This memoir of her childhood growing up in a small, east Texas oil town, was first published in 1995. The thought of how this woman's writing has managed to escape me until two weeks ago is unnerving. I blame all of you, actually, for not telling me about her sooner. Jesus and the angels will help me recover from this most bitter betrayal.
More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Melody rated it:

Re-read. I stand by the five star rating. Karr's voice is pure, poetic and real. Though my childhood was nothing like hers, the bits which I identify with stir up an amazing welter of emotions and ghosts for me. I fall overboard into this memoir and can smell the East Texas refinery town just like I'd grown up there. Karr's description of her mother's Nervousness is priceless and heartwrenching. The whole book is beautifully written, so much so that one hardly realizes how deeply dysfunctional t More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2011

Reese rated it:

NOTE: THE LIARS'CLUB four-star rating does not mean that I "really liked it."

I usually love memoirs. (Well, not ones written by narcissists or liars.) If I were young enough to have read Mary Karr's THE LIARS' CLUB (1995) when I was in my early twenties, I might well have appreciated it to the extent that the work deserves. Alas, another if. Unfortunately, I've grown old, old enough to "wear my trousers rolled" (T.S. Eliot). And in the past year, this old person h More...

9 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Mariel rated it:

I read The Liar's Club when I was lonely and alone during a time I wasn't (in theory) supposed to be that way. Was it good company? Not really. I took away more than anything else from this book the feeling of trying to force acceptance of something that is unacceptable. I mean as a work of writing, as I really can't speak for Karr's heart and soul to what she feels and believes always (changing one's mind does happen, or so I'm told).

There's a good way to write a memoir about super More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Liz rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2012

Ellen rated it:

So that's how you end a memoir. Case closed.

I can't imagine the restraint and discipline required to write this book. Karr doesn't really tell you a damn thing. She lets the questions accrue, and you go along for the ride as they spool. There are so many questions (Wait, what the?) that you forget about half of them. And she never mentions any of them explicitly anyway, as in "I always wondered about..." Nope. She doesn't really explain. You're just in this fog of incident an More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 16, 2011

Richard rated it:

This is the first of three memoirs that make up her life in the small refinery town of Leechfield (nee Groves) Texas. "The Liar's Club" is a reference to Karr's father a bigger than life character who spent his adult life working for Gulf or some other refinery in this backwater east Texas town (best known as the place where Agent Orange was produced). The books name derives from her father's penchant for drinking and telling famously big tales to his friends Cooter et al who relish h More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2008

Jamie rated it:

Oh it was lovely. Really it was. Sad and at times hard to read, but quite honestly, it as My Home is Far Away, but more contemporary. Naturally, I am a big believer in the notion: memoirs are the most unreliable form of narrating. There's really no way a seven year-old, despite ample research and parental compliance, remembers word-per-word telephone conversations from 1963. But, who says the truth has to really BE the truth? A good story or an embelished story is JUST as meaningful. Some More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 24, 2007

Adam rated it:

This memoir covers Mary Karr's childhood years to about her teens (with some later teen/early 20s at the end). I've read her other books and not been as impressed, but "The Liar's Club" is great writing about growing up in a strange family in an East Texas oil town, in the 60s/70s. Her dad is an oil field worker who is a great, loving father, but with a drinking problem, violent streaks, and her mother is an artist with clear mental health problems who doesn't fit in a little town in E More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2009

Naida rated it:

Another "poor me" childhood memoir. While I sympathize and am aghast at much of what happened to Mary Karr during this book, I just didn't feel the pull of emotion or empathy you would expect to come from a book like this.

Jeanette Walls' the Glass Castle - a similar story of a young girl's growing up in rural Appalachia was better written and more engaging than this book

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 04, 2008

Oceana9 rated it:

A book from the "memoir craze," but really compelling in its starkness, and spare, truthful writing. A glimpse into what it's like to grow up in a sickening, ugly East Texas town (actually called Leechfield) with a crazy, alcoholic mother and an oil-drillin' father. Not schmaltzy or self-pitying for one second. My favorite scene is where the mother decides she doesn't want to be a "fucking hausfrau" anymore and proceeds to paint all the mirrors in the house with lipstick, cov More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2008

Neil rated it:

I don't often read memoirs, and not surprisingly even a well-written one like this didn't do a whole lot for me. One thing I did really like about it were all the times that Karr pointed out the gaps in her memory--the principal whose suit she could remember but whose face she remembered no particular detail about, the portions of a stressful evening that are lost to her. It was a nice way to pull back from a fiction that the memoirist can remember everything and to implicitly raise the question More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Karo rated it:

I bought this book because I had read so much about Karr's "sequel" memoir, Cherry. I figured that if I was going to read it, I should start at the beginning. I should make a note here that I'm a sucker for the memoir rage that's been sweeping bookstores nationwide -- there's just something ultimately satisfying about reading a book of life as opposed to a book of events. Karr met my expectations with a one-two suckerpunch. The Liar's Club is extraordinarily well written; I love Karr's More...

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Jan 16, 2012

Kira rated it:

The memoir genre has seen heavy rotation since The Liar’s Club came out, and I think that puts the book at a disadvantage today, as does what I consider a general desensitization to family dysfunction. This isn’t to say that I don’t believe Karr’s childhood was tragic—that goes without saying—just that in the era of reality television and tabloid gossip, it sometimes feels like everyone’s dealing with dysfunction. What family doesn’t include a drunk, or a liar, or a cheater? What kid hasn’t expe More...

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Dec 03, 2011

Diann added it

The proliferation of memoirs has already appeared on various literary pundits’ “Ten Worst Things About the Nineties” lists. Some argue that the form’s renewed popularity proves how pandemic contemporary America’s “culture of narcissism,” to use Christopher Lasch’s phrase, has become. Others point accusingly at a population of readers—and writers—who’ve grown too dimwitted or lazy to bother with fictional constructs like character development, plot, and complex points of view.

Certain wo More...

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Nov 15, 2011

Leah added it

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr certainly earned its spot on the New York Times’ Bestseller List. The memoir, published in 1995, describes a wild, dangerous, troubled childhood punctuated by moments of love, and happiness. Before I was twenty pages in I was surprised that she had survived such a childhood long enough to write about it. The Liar’s Club is broken into three parts, and describes three important times in Karr’s life and the influence that her family, most notably her parents and older More...

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Nov 14, 2011

Maggie rated it:

whereas this is a well written book and easily read and whereas the details of mary karr's childhood are funny, sad, and compelling all at once, there is also a pornographic description toward the end of the book that is unnecessary. to have had such an experience as a young child is harsh. harsh indeed. and marks one for life. but to have the reader brought unawares into such a detailed description is not a requirement of an honest memoir. i hope that for her the writing of this book and especi More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Joslyn rated it:

The drama and all out chaos which comes with life’s experiences can rival the fictional stories that many people love to read. This is why Mary Karr chose to write a memoir instead of adding fictional elements to her already complex childhood. The Liars’ Club has the crazy types of characters who inspire the wild characters in dramatic movies and novels. This memoir has many of the creativity and pandemonium needed to write a fiction novel except for the fact that Mary Karr is pulling the e More...

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Oct 03, 2011

Rachel added it

Despite the Pain, Love Remains

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. Published in 1995 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., New York.

Mary Karr’s book, “The Liar’s Club,” is a memoir of her unstable childhood. Through her own words we are able to get a glimpse of what life was like for her growing up, and are able to witness (as we read) what she had to endure each day. Karr’s method of writing this book involves looking back on her past through young eyes, which he More...

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May 31, 2011

Judy rated it:

I was given a copy of Lit by Mary Karr and decided that I should first read her memoir of her childhood in a small East Texas oil town before diving into the volume about her adult life. Pirst published in 1995, The Liar's Club launched the current advalance of memoirs and left me emotionally speechless. This book describes a childhood that we would wish on no young person. The author endured situations that would have broken me in a heartbeat, yet she and her sister not only survived, but co More...

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Apr 06, 2011

Lori rated it:

“The Liars’ Club” is a memoir about the troubled and fragmented childhood of Mary Karr. The non-linear narration in the memoir is, as the author points out in Chapter One, is to allow the reader to experience her life’s meaning as she experienced it. Troubling events that occur in her childhood are displayed through a child’s eyes. Like dirty jokes hidden in children’s films that you just don’t “get” until you watch it later. Before this novel I had never read an entire memoir. The Liars’ Club i More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Allie rated it:

The Liar’s Club
The Liar’s Club was written by Mary Karr and published by Penguin Books in May of 2005. Karr delivers a compassionate and at times alarming description of a dysfunctional family life in Port Arthur, Texas. Karr's voice shines through as she describes her childhood from the witty, tomboyish honest view of a little girl. Her recollections are immersed in a unique humor that makes this book hilarious in a twisted way.
The book starts off in a pivotal moment o More...

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Feb 26, 2011

Amanda rated it:

A Review of Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club
While reading Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, I was astonished to find that it was less fiction and more fact than I had expected. This book is a memoire of Mary Karr, beginning in her young life. I believe that knowing that this book was a memoire whilst I read, made it all the more poignant. What is truly commendable about The Liar’s Club, other than the extraordinary narration, is the emotion that was obviously put into it so that the reader m More...

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Feb 16, 2011

Megan rated it:

“The Liars” Club’ is a memoir that recounts the young life of Mary Karr, set mostly in the locale of flatland Texas. Mary writes with a style of frank storytelling that sets the stage for each event she covers in an intimate, matter-of-fact way. From tales of her wanderlust ancestors to childhood accounts of tragedy and circumstance, she maintains a tangible presence in her story telling and even breaks occasionally to add a note on the validity of the story she’s covering according to her sibli More...

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Feb 16, 2011

Jalen rated it:

As a departure from the usual fantasy worlds that I like to plunge into, I decided to read The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr. It’s a memoir that reflects her younger years, specifically 1961 and 1963.
Reading a work of nonfiction is very different from reading about a world that does not exist. With a work of fiction, I’m usually rushing to get through because I want to know what that world holds. Reading nonfiction, I’m not in that same rush because I know the events are real. The way Mary Kar More...

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Feb 16, 2011

Danielle rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Dec 02, 2010

Gayle rated it:

As usual, when someone insists I HAVE to read a particular book, say, after we've workshopped a piece, I ignore the recommendation, fearing another writer's influence over material I'm struggling with. In this case, I wish I'd read Karr's memoir sooner, not for fear of influence, but for a damned good read and some insights into what makes a memoir read more like a novel than a been-there done-that personal rehash. Karr's characterization of her father, his story-telling, his dialect is unbeliev More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 26, 2010

Nick rated it:

I fully anticipated that I would love this book. Almost everyone else has. And has then gone on to love her two subsequent memoirs. But, I have to say, I probably found the 10th Anniversary Foreword and the last chapter (when the reader finds out, at least in part, why her mother is so insane) the most compelling. The rest of it I just couldn't get into.

It's not that nothing happens -- because plenty does -- but at times I felt like SO MUCH happened that the reader wasn't give More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

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