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Lit: A Memoir (P.S.)by Mary Karr
Staff Pick
The best way I can describe this work is to say that it's absolutely delicious. More than a mere memoir, this fascinating jewel contains universal truths, with delicate and elegant phrasing, and, despite the subject matter, there's no sense of frivolous belly-button gazing. Some of the vignettes seem as if they came from a wildly good contemporary novel, while others resonate with a reader's remembrances of his or her own triumphs and disgraces. Karr's latest is not only her best work, but one of the best journeys in the genre. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness — and to her astonishing resurrection.
Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in The Mental Marriott, with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, 'Give me chastity, Lord' — but not yet has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up — as only Mary Karr can tell it. Review:"That Karr survived...to become the evenhanded, self-disciplined writer she is today is arguably nothing short of a miracle, and readers of her previous two books won't be disappointed." Library Journal
Review:"In a gravelly, ground-glass-under-your-heel voice that can take you from laughter to awe in a few sentences, Karr has written the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years." New York Times
Review:"With her ability to tell a good story and her flair for written expression, Karr has found another way to...make peace with herself, her back story and those around her." Dallas Morning News
Review:"Karr narrates this new book with the same confessional, raw, urgent, vividly funny and blazing style.... In short, in Lit Karr continues to deliver the goods." Oregonian
Review:"A redemptive, painfully funny story." Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
Review:"Karr movingly depicts her halting journey into AA, making it clear her grit and spirit remain intact." Michelle Green, People
Review:"Lit matches its predecessors in candor and outstrips them in insight." Commonweal
Review:"Karr's sharp and funny sensibility won me over to her previous two volumes, but what wins me over to Lit is the way her acute self-awareness conquers any hint that hers is the only version of this story....Karr is as funny as ever." Valery Sayers, Washington Post
Review:"A brutally honest, sparkling story." Glamour
Review:"There isn't a single false note in Lit." Carmela Ciuraru, Christian Science Monitor
Review:"Karr could tell you what's on her grocery list, and its humor would make you bust a gut, its unexpected insights would make you think and her pitch-perfect command of our American vernacular might even take your breath away....[Karr] holds the position of grande dame memoirista." Samantha Dunn, Los Angeles Times
Review:"[Karr's] poetic sensibility infuses every sentence of her story with an alliterative and symbolic energy, conjuring echoes of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and occasionally, Sylvia Plath." Publishers Weekly
Review:"Mary Karr restores memoir form's dignity with Lit." Vanity Fair
Review:"Irresistible. . . . [Written] with trademark wit, precision, and unfailing courage." Pam Houston, O Magazine
Review:"Mary Karr sparked a memoir revival with The Liars' Club — now she's back with Lit to describe how she turned those early troubles into literary gold." Body + Soul
Review:"Searing. . . . A book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won't let you go. . . . Chronicles with searching intelligence, humor and grace the author's slow, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes painful discovery of her vocation and her voice as a poet and writer." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Review:"Riveting." Redbook Magazine
Review:"An absolute gem that secures Karr's place as one of the best memoirists of her generation. . . . [She] writes with a singular combination of poetic grace and Texan verve." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review:"With this third book Karr has managed to raise the bar higher still on the genre of memoir." Steve Ross, Huffington Post
Review:"[Karr] continues to delight with her signature dark humor and pitch-perfect metaphors delivering large doses of wit and painful insights. . . .There are plenty of memoirs about being drunk, but this one has Karr's voice — both sure-footed and breezy — behind it." Beth Greenfield, Time Out New York
Review:"As irresistible as it is unflinchingly honest. . . .With grace, saltiness and profanity galore, Karr undeniably re-establishes herself as one of our finest memoirists and storytellers." Melanie Gideon, San Francisco Chronicle
Review:"Dazzling. . . . Lit reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe
Review:"[A] radiant, rueful, rip-roaring book. . . .Warm enough to burn a hole in your heart." Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
Synopsis:Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up — as only Mary Karr can tell it.
About the AuthorMary Karr's first memoir, The Liars' Club, kick-started a memoir revolution and won nonfiction prizes from PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters. Also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, it rode high on the New York Timesbestseller list for over a year, becoming an annual "best book" there and for The New Yorker, People, and Time. Recently Entertainment Weeklyrated it number four in the top one hundred books of the past twenty-five years. Her second memoir, Cherry, which was excerpted in The New Yorker, also hit bestseller and "notable book" lists at the New York Timesand dozens of other papers nationwide. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. Other grants include the Whiting Award and Radcliffe's Bunting Fellowship. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
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