Winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award

A tenth anniversary edition of the landmark memoir, with a new introduction by the author.

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.

"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

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

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

"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

The author, a prize-winning poet and critic, looks back at her upbringing in a swampy East Texas refinery town. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis; a fist-swinging father who spun tales with his cronies--dubbed the Liars' Club; and a neighborhood rape when she was eight.

'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.'