The Liars' Club: A Memoir - Softcover

Karr, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143035746 ISBN 13: 9780143035749

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Synopsis

#4 on The New York Times' list of The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years

The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of a hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation

"Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet's ear." --Oprah.com

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 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.

About this title

Review:

"The essential American story ... a beauty." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"Astonishing ... one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"This book is so good I thought about sending it out for a backup opinion...it's like finding Beethoven in Hoboken. To have a poet's precision of language and a poet's insight into people applied to one of the roughest, toughest, ugliest places in America is an astonishing event." --Molly Ivins, The Nation

"9mm humor, gothic wit, and a stunning clarity of memory within a poet's vision.... Karr's unerring scrutiny of her childhood delivers a story confoundingly real." --The Boston Sunday Globe

"Overflows with sparkling wit and humor.... Truth beats powerfully at the heart of this dazzling memoir." --San Francisco Chronicle

Book Description:

The international bestseller from a prize-winning poet and critic

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0143035746
• ISBN 13: 9780143035749
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352