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Original Essays | April 16, 2013

Urban Waite: IMG The Dark Side

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Every night after I finish work, I sit down to write this essay, and every night I fail. And failure, believe it or not, is one of the best things... Continue »
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The Liar's Club

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The Liar's Club Cover

ISBN13: 9780140179835
ISBN10: 0140179836
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

From Powells.com:

Mary Karr is a poet who writes wry, punchy, blackly humorous prose. Her harrowing childhood is brought to Technicolor life in her memoir The Liars' Club. A dazzling bestseller, The Liars' Club was selected one of the best books of 1995 by Time, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly and People. It also won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Prize for Best Nonfiction.

The Liars' Club focuses on Karr's early years growing up in an East Texas refinery town, the child of two larger than life parents: a mother married seven times, twice to Karr's father, who teeters on the brink of psychosis, and a glitteringly charming but violent father. Karr and her sister Lecia know no other life than chaos, fights, and lies spurred by alcoholism and mental illness, and their scrappy defiance in the face of these odds is heroic and poignant. Karr manages to tell her story with love, wicked humor, clarity, and a complete lack of self pity. With its pathos and color Karr has written a white-trash Angela's Ashes making her one of America's most loved memoirists. Georgie, Powells.com

Publisher Comments:

When it was published in 1995, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, as well as 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 twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new introduction that discusses her memoir's impact on her family, 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.

Review:

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

Review:

"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

Review:

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

Review:

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

Review:

"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
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About the Author

Mary Karr's three volumes of poetry are Abacus, The Devil's Tour, and Viper Rum. Her memoir, Cherry, published in 2000, was also a New York Times bestseller. She is a Jesse Truesdale Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
jlak, January 27, 2013 (view all comments by jlak)
This book is a wonderful blend of sadness and hilarity. Karr's writing is sharp, witty, beautiful. I bet she could write about anything and make it interesting. The Liar's Club is by far, my favorite book that I read in 2012.
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milo, October 28, 2011 (view all comments by milo)
I read this book for the first time several years ago and loved it. After taking some writing classes and narrowing down my preferred genre to memoir I decided to give this one another go. Reading it from a more analytical standpoint (pretending as if I were giving in a critique) I am in awe of what a flawless work of creative non-fiction it is. It's so engaging I have to remember to slow down and savor it.
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Nan Rush, January 2, 2010 (view all comments by Nan Rush)
This is a memoir that reads like a novel, captures us from the first page, makes us ache, laugh, cry. We come to know the "characters" like those in David Copperfield. I've recommended this book to all my friends. It's one of the few books I've re-read within a few years of first reading it, and was just as impressed the second time around.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780140179835
Subtitle:
A Memoir
Author:
Karr, Mary
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Location:
New York
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Social life and customs
Subject:
Biography
Subject:
Women
Subject:
Family
Subject:
American - General
Subject:
Sociology - Marriage & Family
Subject:
Poets, American
Subject:
Women poets, American
Subject:
Port Arthur
Subject:
General Biography
Copyright:
1995
Edition Description:
Trade Paper
Series Volume:
NASA TR R-439
Publication Date:
19960501
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
336
Dimensions:
7.77x5.02x.62 in. .51 lbs.
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Related Subjects


Biography » Women
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z
Health and Self-Help » Self-Help » Memoirs

The Liar's Club Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$8.50 In Stock
Product details 336 pages PENGUIN PUTNAM TRADE - English 9780140179835 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Astonishing...one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years."
"Review" by , "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."
"Review" by , "The essential American story...a beauty."
"Review" by , "Overflows with sparkling wit and humor....Truth beats powerfully at the heart of this dazzling memoir."
"Review" by , "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."
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