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Cherry: A Memoir

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 4,332 ratings · 357 reviews

In her 1995 memoir The Liars' Club, a wickedly funny account of her apocalyptic childhood in East Texas, Mary Karr introduced us to her brawling, loving family: a bohemian mother married seven times, twice to her father; her wicked, wheelchair-bound grandmother, and her 'senatorial' sister Lecia, an authoritative ten-year old who, with Mary, tried to keep this explosive fa...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published September 25th 2000 by Viking Adult (first published January 1st 2000)

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Nov 24, 2008 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer by: Some chick on LJ

Shelves: 2002, biography, memoirs

Cherry is the biographical story of a teenager coming into her own. I was told it was a great book by some chick on LJ and I was all geared up for a Great Book. It didn't hit the mark for me. It was good - but I just didn't feel like the story hit that bone of truth for me like it seems to have with other people. Maybe I was at that point in my life where you push away your youth and reading about someone struggling in a small town just hit too close to home? I don't know. I thought the writing...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't think this volume was as good as Liar's Club or Lit. I do like Karr's style and prose. There is a lot of Texas swagger in her. I found her high school descent into drugs rather harrowing. The God she refused to believe in certainly covered her with grace. Driving while tripping on acid! She could have ended up like so many of her friends. What I like about memoirs is seeing how other people come to make sence of their experiences and somehow survive, make it to adulthood (psychically)....more I didn't think this volume was as good as Liar's Club or Lit. I do like Karr's style and prose. There is a lot of Texas swagger in her. I found her high school descent into drugs rather harrowing. The God she refused to believe in certainly covered her with grace. Driving while tripping on acid! She could have ended up like so many of her friends. What I like about memoirs is seeing how other people come to make sence of their experiences and somehow survive, make it to adulthood (psychically). God spoke to me one time at a particular low point when I felt I was just never going to be OK. Like a cup that is glued back together but is still obviously broken. While lamenting this to the Lord, I heard as clear a bell..."that isn't what I am doing in your life. I'm taking the broken pieces and making a mosaic. Something made of broken parts but not itself broken and a thing of beauty." I've never forgotten that.

Another reviewer listed one of the same quotes I liked about first loves...

"First loves take us like that....Which denies their truth, I think, for my inner life took full shape around such a love. I learned to imagine around his face. Before such enchantment takes us, there are only the faces of parents, other kin. Those are doled out to us; they are us in some portion. These first beloveds are other. And we invent ourselves by choosing them."

High School..."But first and foremost you have to restrain youself from displaying the reckless ardor of the unloved toward those strongly disinclined to love you back. These standards seem virtually ingrained into the exalted few, but demand conscious effort and attention from your ilk.

Basically you are hoping to manufacture a whole new bearing or being, some method of maneuvering along the hallways that will result in less vigorous psycho-social BUTT-WHIPPINGS (Texas girl!) than those endured in junior high"

Miracles, when she was getting cosy with the idea of suicide...

"When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anthing at all?

All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and Mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don't know. Further north, I'd guess.

The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says Pete, I think she's up. He hollers in , You ready for breakfast, Pokey. then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He's holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through the folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they'd fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.

Damned if I didn't get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.....And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yoruself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody- who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for surviavl that the coming years are about to demand. You don't earn it. It's given."(less)

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Oct 11, 2008 Kathy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Memoir by Mary Karr of her pre-teen and teen years. Unstable house, alcohol, and then as she got older, sex and drugs. Well-written and honest, but not that great a read.

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Feb 28, 2013 Monty J Heying rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

I'm writing my own stories about growing up in Texas; so I naturally had to read LIAR'S CLUB and CHERRY. I'm glad I did, although my tortured journey toward adulthood began ten years earlier than Mary's and involved nine years in an orphanage. Not comparing; just giving my angle of orientation. To me anyone with parents is spoiled, but then I didn't have drugs to contend with. Still, we shared that "outsider" view and the search for self and struggle to escape the boundaries of our pre-adolescen...more I'm writing my own stories about growing up in Texas; so I naturally had to read LIAR'S CLUB and CHERRY. I'm glad I did, although my tortured journey toward adulthood began ten years earlier than Mary's and involved nine years in an orphanage. Not comparing; just giving my angle of orientation. To me anyone with parents is spoiled, but then I didn't have drugs to contend with. Still, we shared that "outsider" view and the search for self and struggle to escape the boundaries of our pre-adolescent Texas culture.

For a nimble mind there is much to like here: frankness, delightful poetic phrasing and pulse, the drifting scope and focus of the author's camera, bright and intimate views from a thoroughly charming girl I'd like to have known when I was younger. CHERRY races along until the last two psychedelic chapters, which were tricky but instructive for this reader who's never done LSD or anything stronger than pot, leaving me with an unchanged disinterest in such chemical escapades. Still, those two herky-jerky chapters gave me a sense of what "tripping" was like and reminded me of Ken Kesey.

Self-deprecating cultural insights pop up like Whac-a-moles, such as when Mary joins an older black laundry worker on her break. "Her being black so absolutely trumps most other forms of suffering that you feel proud to be treated as an ally. ...You bend over Drusilla's accordion wallet, straining to disguise the knee-jerk piety that comes at such moments from being white, which affords so much unspoken social ease. Surely you'll never be indentured to some packet of grand-babies staring out of yellowed plastic windows. Surely the world will land you in some more elegant circumstance, one that pays you extravagantly for your opinions and brilliant insights into the human condition."

And later, during a drug fest at the beach: "What warms your countercultural heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at--that just doesn't bubble up here."

Another juicy quote: "You know that on this broad planet sympathetic others exist, at least a few beings somewhere who might feel alien as you. Books prove it--characters like old Holden Caulfield... . The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion."

And another: "I stood there while his heavy-lashed eyes sealed themselves against me, and the fine tendons of his sockless feet resumed their post crossed in his loafers out the window."

CHERRY is a more than worthy read for anyone drawn to the journey from puberty to adulthood, especially from a girl's perspective and more especially within the context of a small Texas town. (McMurtry, move over.) I found the issues important, the settings realistic and engaging, the characters and dialogue as well, especially Mary's parents, friends and boyfriends and that engaging judge who was her mother's admirer and rescued Mary from jail.

Thanks Mary.

(less)

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Jan 21, 2009 Deb rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

I had high hopes for this book because Mary Karr explains that she wrote it to fill a void for the female coming-of-age novel. She claims that the world of female teenage years needed to be explored - I agree, so I was really looking forward to what she had to say.

The reality of this memoir is that it is hardly a "typical" growing up, yet she failed to deeply explore the aspects of her youth that may have been more universal. I could only identify with snippets of the story, and just when I was...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Karo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

First of all, let me echo other reviewers in saying not to expect anything like The Liars' Club. Mary Karr is still an enormously gifted writer, but while The Liar's Club had its moments of joy interspersed with various traumas, Cherry is just plain dank. Mary's exploits as a child weren't hopeless -- she had a resiliance about her that assured the reader that she'd be all right, or some version thereof, in the end. The adolescent Mary descends deeper and deeper into a darkness that she manufact...more

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Dec 08, 2011 Alicia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I picked up Cherry by Mary Karr, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no clue that this was a sequel to The Liars Club. If I knew this, I would read the first book first. Cherry is the story of a young teenage girl coming of age. It tells about Mary’s unstable family, first love, and as she gets older, drugs and sex. So if you are not interested in these kinds of things, then this book is not for you. It also has very strong language, but you could just block it out (like I did).

Mary Karr h...more When I picked up Cherry by Mary Karr, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no clue that this was a sequel to The Liars Club. If I knew this, I would read the first book first. Cherry is the story of a young teenage girl coming of age. It tells about Mary’s unstable family, first love, and as she gets older, drugs and sex. So if you are not interested in these kinds of things, then this book is not for you. It also has very strong language, but you could just block it out (like I did).

Mary Karr has a very unique writing technique. The first part of the book was in second person, which you hardly ever see. She refers to you instead of I. An example is on page 11 “In the living room, your daddy’s talking to the TV again” This makes you view yourself as the main character. It’s very creative, but I personally prefer first person. The book also has long stretch in time. It’s not just one year of her life, but it stretches from elementary school through high school. But it somehow seems to cover every detail.

Ever sense Mary was little her family has been unstable. Her dad was an alcaholic, and gambler, and whenever her mom got angry, she would drop everything and “run away”. She would always come back, but sometimes she would be gone for weeks. The only thing Mary had was her older sister. Mary starts high school with sass, and attitude ; because of this her best friend, starts to ignore her, and she loses her as a friend. Karr really emphasizes how she felt during this time in her life. I think that everyone can relate to losing a best friend, which helps you relate to the author.

Just like her mother, Mary eventually runs away to Los Angeles. But unlike her mom, she never comes back home. Why Los Angeles? She wanted to get out of small town life. Her whole life, she has lived in a small town in Texas. This is where things go down hill in her life. Mary gets caught up in drugs. This part of the book switches to second person again. Again, creative, but not necessary.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I decided to read cherry, but I was not that impressed. I would only recommend this book to girls between the ages of 15-19. Maybe I’m being stubborn, but this book was hard to get interested in, very slow, and had way too much language. (less)

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Nov 15, 2011 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Cherry," by Mary Karr. The Penguin Group, New York, 2000.

I knew I was in for a good read when I opened the cover of "Cherry," Mary Karr's memoir, and read the dedications: "... to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes." Karr is a bestselling author of poetry and essays, as well as her two novels "The Liars' Club" (the prequel) and "Cherry" (the sequel). She is currently a literature and creative writing professor at Syracuse University. Karr's novel "Cherry" is a memoir of her teen years an...more "Cherry," by Mary Karr. The Penguin Group, New York, 2000.

I knew I was in for a good read when I opened the cover of "Cherry," Mary Karr's memoir, and read the dedications: "... to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes." Karr is a bestselling author of poetry and essays, as well as her two novels "The Liars' Club" (the prequel) and "Cherry" (the sequel). She is currently a literature and creative writing professor at Syracuse University. Karr's novel "Cherry" is a memoir of her teen years and sexual coming-of-age. The prologue begins in California in the year 1972, and the story opens up with Karr's stark narration about mounting the road of mystery, "the one you mount from the town you were born" (3). From the beginning, you can hear the confidence and sass in the narrator's tone. This tone is often hilarious but also betrays the many trials Karr endures as part of her coming-of-age. The novel is organized chronologically into four parts: "Elementary's End," "Midway," "Limbo," and "High." Part four, "High," is the lengthiest of all the novel's sections and most turbulent. The writing is filled with honesty and realism as it discusses sensitive topics of sex, love, and adolescence. There are also several references to drug paraphernalia: "You can't evoke the first joint you took a hit of. Or the second or third, for that matter. Nor even the first tab of acid" (163).

While the prologue mentions California, the setting for "Cherry" is in fact fictional. The events take place in Leechfield, Texas. Although this novel is a sequel to "The Liars' Club," which explores Karr's childhood and dysfunctional family life, "Cherry" delves into how Karr begins to find her own intellectual identity and separates from her childhood into adolescence or young-womanhood. This theme of separation is demonstrated in the first chapter of part four, "High," in which Karr says, "If there were any place worthy of escape in the seventies, it was Leechfield with its mind-crushing atmosphere of sameness." Many of her actions stem from this escapism desire. Another important aspect of the writing is its raw truthfulness and reliability. Despite the time setting, Karr's hormone charged adolescence is relatable to many young women. Karr creates little literary distance between the reader and herself. In other words, she is completely open in her evaluation of her own life's story. Her dialogues and diction reveals this as well. I selected one small sampling of Karr's writing to demonstrate the overarching tone of the novel--a dialogue section of Chapter Fifteen reveals her brashness, wit, and humor all in only a few lines: "When you explain how his dick leapt at your touch like a living thing, she accuses you of being an animist. Meaning what, o Merlin. Dictionary me... In animism they think if it moves it's alive... How do you know this kind of obscure shit?" (179-180).

What drew me into Mary Karr's novel initially was the idea of the story; the emotionally charged adolescence and self-discovery. What I ended up discovering and enjoying most about the novel was in fact the style it was written in. Karr takes a highly relatable story but makes it undeniably her own with her brazen writing style and honesty. (less)

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Sep 02, 2010 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not as good as Liar's Club or Lit but there were a some of quotes I liked. Below are a few:

After dad drove away from house and she barely could hear his truck:
"I still clung to the silence for the noise."

On first loves: "Because they rarely have any consequence (few marry their sixth grade sweetheart), people slight them. They exist in the thin cliché of bad country tunes, thus becoming generic, sandblasted of peculiarities. Our own features in youth have not yet been sharply carved. So in some...more

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Dec 17, 2009 Ciara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, feminist-y-books, read-in-2009

i feel bad only giving this book three stars! i LOVED the liar's club, which, with the recently published lit & this book, make a kind of memoir trilogy charting mary karr's life from scrappy texas child survivor of mentally ill, alcoholic parents, to teenage coming of age & sexual awakening, to struggling alcoholic mother. i have lit on hold at the library & am still looking forward to reading it, but cherry was kind of a letdown after the magic of the liar's club.

this is the teenag...more i feel bad only giving this book three stars! i LOVED the liar's club, which, with the recently published lit & this book, make a kind of memoir trilogy charting mary karr's life from scrappy texas child survivor of mentally ill, alcoholic parents, to teenage coming of age & sexual awakening, to struggling alcoholic mother. i have lit on hold at the library & am still looking forward to reading it, but cherry was kind of a letdown after the magic of the liar's club.

this is the teenage girl/sexual awakening/awkward adolescence part of the triad. big chunks of the book are written in second person, & other big chunks are written in first person. i am sure it's some kind of poetic device--maybe karr attempting to use her own teenage experiences as a stand-in for american girlhood or something? but goddamn, it really grated on my nerves after a while. it felt really amateur, & i know mary karr is not an amateur writer. second person is a notoriously difficult perspective to use & i just didn't think it worked here at all.

i also had a lot of trouble getting into the prose. i flew through the liar's club in a single day, but this book really seemed to drag. the words were just too dense & i had a lot of trouble teasing out the story amid all the lush descriptions of the interior life of the american teenage girl. maybe this is indicative of my own impatience with teenage girls (despite--or maybe due to--having once been one myself)...i guess karr did a good job capturing a lot of the details that start to fade as time goes by. there were times when something she wrote suddenly jarred loose a memory of my own high school days, some tiny little thing i thought i had forgotten forever, but suddenly i remembered exactly how it felt to stand in the hallway at the second high school i attended & find out that my english class assignment wasn't AP. so...i did appreciate that. i just wish there would have more transcendent moments like that.

maybe the worst was the last story in the book, about attending a jazz club with a gay classmate from high school. the whole chapter had this icky voyeuristic feel to it, like, "look at the hijinks these black jazz cats get up to, with their heroin & their strippers & their gender ambiguity, & boy, it scared the shit out me when i was a little white girl." it just left a really bad taste in my mouth. like amateur hour at the shitty lit mag.

i wanted more narrative, & fewer vague fluttery recollections. there were all these references to friends ending up in jail, or OD'ing, or committing suicide, but the reader was never told who or how or when or if/why we should care, so i just didn't.

basically, i wanted to like this way more than i did. sad.(less)

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May 25, 2009 KrisAnne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not nearly as good as the Liar's Club, unless you really really enjoy reading detailed accounts of other people's drug trips. To be fair, those episodes don't take up that much of the book, but something about this one just didn't hang together for me. I realize that adolescence is trippy and incohesive all by itself, and maybe that's what she was after, but I doubt it.

So there's the drug stuff, and some really good writing about sexual awakening (what's most gripping, actually, is the stuff wa...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Anna Cate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended

Mary Karr is one of the only writers I've ever found who accurately describes what it's like to be a teenage girl.

On first loves: "Because they rarely have any consequence (few marry their sixth grade sweetheart), people slight them. They exist in the thin cliche of bad country tunes, thus becoming generic, sandblasted of peculiarities. Our own features in youth have not yet been sharply carved. So in some way, we don't exist yet. Thus we mock ourselves for loving so easily and in the process ch...more

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Mar 23, 2009 Caitlin Constantine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mary Karr is a literary god. She is just brilliant. Her prose is like poetry but without the self-consciousness that usually accompanies prose stylists who write like poets and vice versa. She also manages to capture the flavor of living in east Texas - the turns of phrase, the slang - without seeming forced or pretentious. Just the writing alone is worth the price of the book, because the writing makes what has by now become a cliche in memoir writing - recounting a troubled, drug-addled adoles...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I approached Cherry under the impression that it was the lesser of Karr's memoirs - word of mouth and general internet criticism had led me to believe that it didn't have the power of The Liar's Club . But by page 25 of this book I was already convinced that Cherry is actually the more complex and ambitious of the two books. Alternating between the second and first person, Cherry evokes a more universally nostalgic exploration of high school girl-hood, one that is richer and braver than the...more

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Jan 22, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Kurt

Shelves: isle-of-women, nonfiction, nifty-gifties, wallace-and-co, the-south

3.5 instead of 3. I've heard & read various stories about Mary Karr & was prepared to not like her writing. However, I was captivated by Cherry & Karr's portrayal of the familiar yet stagnant life in a small Southern town. In the last section of the book, Karr mentions how she is always surprised when people think her personal stories indicate a hard childhood or how she developed personal strength. She thinks that everyone from her hometown could tell stories about how hard their li...more

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Jan 13, 2010 Elaine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was prompted to read Cherry in part because of a New York Times book review that declared "If The Liars' Club succeeded partly because of its riveting particularity, Cherry succeeds because of its universality." The Liars' Club is without a doubt a uniquely peculiar memoir of a cataclysmic childhood, and although I did not find Cherry "universal," I can totally see where the critic is coming from. Mary Karr does something strange in writing Cherry: for what feels like a good portion of the mem...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Kathryn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir-biography

I ran across this book in the bookstore one day and it looked interesting, so I bought it. Before I'd even finished reading it, I ordered The Liar's Club, her first memoir (These two books and her third memoir, Lit, can all stand on their own but it makes much more sense to read them all in order). This book is simply amazing. Some events in Karr's story are so harrowing that I had to keep reminding myself that she (obviously) made it out alive. I love the way she presents her family members--sh...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Chad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was above average. Standard 3 star fare. As every other review will proclaim, I loved The Liars' Club, the first book in her memoir trilogy. I read this one because I bought and am reading my way through all 3. So why isn't this as good as the first you may ask? There is not much driving narrative. In other words, it isn't very linear- which may not be good or bad in and of itself. But it interested me less personally. I like characters, but I NEED a fairly linear story even if there...more

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Jun 11, 2011 Kirby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Supposedly Cherry is "not as good" as The Liars Club, but I found the writing to be just as eloquent and heart-breaking as Mary Karr's first memoir. More significantly, the story REALLY hit home for me: a weird girl grows up in Texas, trying to be bad but also smart, exuding as much confidence as possible, but secretly a shell of emotion, dealing with heavy family drama, but keeping a wicked sense of humor... I mean, I didn't take drugs in high school, and I never mouthed off to teachers, but a...more

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Oct 03, 2010 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Like "The Liar's Club," Karr's first book in her series of memoirs, this second installment was greatly enjoyable. I feel as if I can hear Karr's voice when I read her words, and I could listen to her stories for long uninterrupted chunks of time. In this book she again brings the people and experiences of her past to vivid life.

On occasion I felt a little thrown by her habit of interrupting the story's flow and ending paragraphs with quoted lines of poetry or a reflection on the story's events...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Davie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished

An account of Mary Karr: the teenage years. Complete with the melodramatic notions that can attend those years.

This one is written largely in a peculiar voice -- not sure what the technical term is. The sentences are from the author's point of view, but stated as "you"/present tense instead of "I"/past tense. E.g., "you bump into Bill Bob on the street", "you think this feeling will last forever" etc etc. It's not totally annoying, and makes sense as a tool for talking about adolescence -- it's...more

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May 05, 2009 Lori rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: rereads-first-read-years-ago, 2009may

As I delved into The Liar's Club, Mary Karr's first memoir, it occurred to me I had another of her books on the shelf. I couldn't remember much about Cherry, beyond its "sexual awakening" theme, but thought it would be interesting to read about Karr's teenage years just after reading about her childhood.

Eh.

The book stands alone, but it shouldn't. She mostly sets aside the horrors of her childhood to explore boys and drugs, relegating trauma (including hints about a rape when she was 8) to quick...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Caris rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Mary Karr

Shelves: 2011

What the fuck is wrong with me?
A review in 20 questions
by: Caris

Why did I pick this book up?
What did I expect to find?
Why did I not bother to read the blurb?
How did this become a bestseller?
Was the prologue as uninteresting as I thought it was?
Why was the first part written in first-person and the rest in second?
Who writes a memoir in second person?
Who thinks her experiences are universal enough to write in second person?
Why did she whine so much?
Why do people write about their drug experiences?...more

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Jun 07, 2013 Jenna rated it 2 of 5 stars

I did not like this book nearly as much as I wanted. Partly, this is my own fault, as I thought the book would cover more of the time after the author left Leechfield for California. I kept waiting for the book to get to the point (the point being to get out of Leechfield, as described in the prologue) but eventually it dawned on me that wasn't going to happen. There were parts of this book that were good, but I got really annoyed with the use of the second-person narrative and the author's pare...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Song rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From an artistic standpoint, this book is very well written. The artist has a strong command of the English language and her vocabulary is vast. However...

I like to read memoirs that I feel go somewhere. This book didn't really do that. Sure, I got to watch Mary grow up a little bit, and maybe I was hoping for a change. I would've been okay with a change, but the way the book began led me to believe a change would take place. Outside of puberty, I didn't really feel like there was a change. And...more

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Nov 07, 2011 randy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i am pretty sure this one is getting only two stars because my expectations were so high going in. the liar's club is one of my all time favorite memoirs. it is one of my all time favorite books.
karr's writing here is while very good, not nearly in the same league as it is when she paints those childhood years. there was also something of a lack of focus here. the last say 6th of the book just seemed to meander astray. I guess sometimes life does that, but this felt more like "i need to make it...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Tabitha Blankenbiller rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cherry has two distinct features that set it apart from other memoirs I have read recently: first, It’s written in second person. The narrator separates herself from the character moving through the world and looks away at her as a “you,” giving the illusion that the audience is a disembodied self. The second characteristic is the linear structure of the book. This is not a series of vignettes or short stories. This is a long arcing book, moving from elementary school to the twilight of high sch...more Cherry has two distinct features that set it apart from other memoirs I have read recently: first, It’s written in second person. The narrator separates herself from the character moving through the world and looks away at her as a “you,” giving the illusion that the audience is a disembodied self. The second characteristic is the linear structure of the book. This is not a series of vignettes or short stories. This is a long arcing book, moving from elementary school to the twilight of high school.

At the beginning of the book, the second person voice struck me as hokey and detracting. The book begins with a prologue set toward the latter end of the story, and as I had yet to get to know the “you” she’s referring to, I felt off-kilter. What’s she trying to accomplish here? I kept wondering. Does she want me to sympathize with the druggy, splintering self she’s describing? I was having a difficult time indulging this angsty teenager who is suddenly “me” from this sudden introduction. The style started to make more sense in the first chapter and section, “Elementary’s End.” By using the second person voice and beginning at such a young age, it becomes more relatable and far less distracting than when we’re suddenly thrust into her teens. She describes common childhood experiences that we’ve all lived through—trying to find a semblance of social grace, making and losing friends, the ruination of our beloved parents—so that we are sympathetic witnesses to her world before it starts to come crashing down. By creating a slight separation between narrator and character, Karr is able to incorporate some insightful curtain-peeks and insights. In some pieces this may have come off as condescending and indulgent. It’s Karr’s unabashed, unflinching honesty that makes it successful. She shows us the good and promising events, thoughts and actions of her past, alongside the tragic, ugly and embarrassing ones (which seem to be in much richer abundance). She does not apologize or make excuses for herself, but reflects honestly on what she, and the rest of humanity, would have been thinking and doing in the same situation, and mulls the consequence from an elapsed and physical distance. One of the most powerful hindsights she offers is in response to her treatment of best friend Meredith. Her brother has been sentenced to jail time for crimes he did not commit, and “you” were unable to cope with her pain. “Meredith needed a kind of simple care that eluded you. That fact will leave this carved-out sense of having failed her. Not intentionally, but from being blind… Part of you knows that with sufficient heart, you might have marshaled some comfort for Meredith other than oblivion (Karr 220).” We may be disappointed in “your” neglect of Meredith’s feelings and situation, but coupled with Karr’s reflection, the situation becomes more empathetic on all sides. We’ve all been too young and foolish to help a friend the way we should have, or handled a bad situation with the care it required. Meredith continues to be close with “you” through the book and foreshadowed beyond. She understands “your” human downfalls, and “you” are eventually able to see them.

Karr is able to add this depth to her story by writing it from a good distance away. The book was published in 2000, 30 years and beyond from the events in the book. She, alongside her characters and events, have had time to settle and fit into a bigger picture. This is further proof, building on the assertion during craft talks and workshops at the residency, that memoir has to be written from a distance. Like Tender at the Bone and The Boys of My Youth, these are 40-50 year old authors writing about their childhoods, teens and very young adulthood. The complexity in these pieces is further proof that I’m not going to be able to write about something that is basically still happening without it falling flat and underdone. On a more hopeful note, it does lend more proof that writing about one’s childhood and early life is very relevant and interesting to mature readers. It is a place that we have all been, and that resonates with an audience. There are many lessons we find in these simple events (many that seem inconsequential to older participants around us) that can propel stories of later life to a much lusher level.
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Feb 20, 2010 Kathleen F rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Somehow Mary Karr's prose lost a little of its magic in her sequel to the marvelous The Liars' Club. Cherry is also beautifully written, but part of Karr's spell is lost because her story--about her drift into "knowingness" more than simply the loss of her virginity--is aimless, a series of anecdotes that loop back on themselves searching for meaning. While I happily waded through sentences and imagery that took my breath away in her former book, in this one, it felt like trying to clear away so...more

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Apr 09, 2011 Christine Ward rated it 2 of 5 stars

Better than I remembered, although nowhere as good as Karr's debut memoir, "The Liars' Club". The premise of this memoir - Karr's burgeoning sexuality and development from child to young woman - is slightly disingenuous, because although Karr does include anecdotes about both topics, there really is no epiphany or - frankly - point to this chronicle. Karr is a talented writer, and clearly has a gift for language, especially when it comes to remembering dialogue, and her family is by turns touchi...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Kittredge added it · review of another edition

funny, riveting, wrenching. a portrait of a lost teenager searching for a pack. the only negative lies in the fact that mary karr (to her credit) is an accomplished poet...and poets must create vivid imagery with every word and every phrase. karr succeeds brilliantly as a poet in this book, but because the novel deals with such painful material, the density and vividness of the prose gets exhausting about halfway through. I couldn't wait to finish it to see how the story resolved, but the langua...more

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About Mary Karr

Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University.
The Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year, and was named one of the year's best books. It delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply t...more

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“No road offers more mystery than that first one you mount from the town you were born to, the first time you mount it of your own volition, on a trip funded by your own coffee tin of wrinkled up dollars - bills you've saved and scrounged for, worked the all-night switchboard for, missed the Rolling Stones for, sold fragrant pot with smashed flowers going brown inside twist-tie plastic baggies for. In fact, to disembark from your origins, you've done everything you can think to scrounge money save selling your spanking young pussy.” — 10 people liked it

“Your mother rolls her eyes at the cat lapping grapefruit juice, says, Everything that comes into this house is crazy - whether we choose them for that or they get that way, I don't know.” — 3 people liked it

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