The Liars' Club

Last updated
The Liars' Club
The Liars' Club.jpg
AuthorMary Karr
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Memoir
Publisher Viking Adult
Publication date
1995
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages320 pp
ISBN 0-670-85053-5
OCLC 31374315
818/.5403 B 20
LC Class PS3561.A6929 Z468 1995

The Liars' Club is a memoir by the American author Mary Karr. Published in 1995 by Viking Adult, the book tells the story of Karr's childhood in the 1960s in a small industrial town in Southeast Texas. [1] The title refers to her father and his friends who would gather together to drink and tell stories when they were not working at the local oil refinery or the chemical plant. [2]

Contents

The book was a New York Times bestseller. [3] In addition to winning the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, [4] [5] the memoir was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. [6] In 2005, a 10-year anniversary edition was published with an added introduction from Karr. [7] The Liars' Club is credited for launching a resurgence in the popularity of the memoir genre. [8] [9]

After the success of The Liars' Club, Karr followed up with two more memoirs: Cherry, which picks up at the end of The Liars' Club, was published in 2001, [10] and Lit which was published in 2009. [11]

Plot

The book tells the story of Karr's troubled childhood in a small Texas town in the early 1960s. Using a non-linear story line, Karr describes the troubles of growing up in a family and town where heavy alcohol abuse and psychological problems are common issues. The memoir details her experience being raped and molested as a child, her mother's mental instability, and her witness to death and disparity. [12]

The book is split into three sections, each corresponds to a different period of her life. The first section, called "Texas, 1961", details Karr's and her sister Lecia's upbringing in Southeast Texas. The narrative includes backgrounds on her mother Charlie and her father J.P., including how they met, and their previous relationships. Karr also writes about her maternal grandmother who, at 50 years old, died of cancer.

The second section of the book is called "Colorado, 1963". Karr explains that her family "moved to Colorado wholly by accident". [13] While in Colorado, Karr's parents get divorced, and J.P. moves back to Texas, while Karr and her sister stay with Charlie. Her mother eventually meets Hector, who tries to make the girls call him "Daddy". After Charlie begins to drink again, Karr and Lecia become scared when one night their mother points a gun at and threatens Hector. Eventually, J.P. flies the girls back to Texas. Charlie and Hector travel to Texas too, and after J.P. punches Hector, Charlie leaves him, returning to her ex-husband for good.

The third section titled, "Texas Again, 1980", jumps ahead 17 years to a period when Karr is older and living in Boston, She returns to Texas after her father suffers a stroke. Karr helps Charlie care for J.P. While there, Karr reconnects with her mother and learns more about Charlie's mysterious past and previous mental health issues.

Reviews

The Liars' Club received universal acclaim upon its publication in 1995. Sheila Ballantyne of The New York Times lauds the memoir's "haunting, often exquisite phrasing of states of being and qualities of mind that resonate long after a page is turned." [12] Writing for The Washington Post , Jonathan Yardley noted that, "The Liars' Club is a tribute to and lament for a world its author no longer occupies. ... It is the essential American story." [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry McMurtry</span> American novelist (1936–2021)

Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations. He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.

Gregory Rabassa, ComM, was an American literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Karr</span> American poet and essayist

Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist from East Texas. She is widely noted for her 1995 bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. Karr is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Choi</span> American novelist (born 1969)

Susan Choi is an American novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Patchett</span> American novelist and memoirist (born 1963)

Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Swofford</span> American writer and former U.S. Marine

Anthony Swofford is an American writer and former U.S. Marine, best known for his 2003 book Jarhead, based heavily on his accounts of various situations encountered in the Persian Gulf War. This memoir was the basis of the 2005 film of the same name, directed by Sam Mendes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Doty</span> American poet and memoirist (born 1953)

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

Kathryn Harrison is an American author. She has published seven novels, two memoirs, two collections of personal essays, a travelogue, two biographies, and a book of true crime. She reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review. Her personal essays have been included in many anthologies and have appeared in Bookforum, Harper's Magazine, More Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue, Salon, and Nerve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Balakian</span> American poet

Peter Balakian is an Armenian-American poet, prose writer, and scholar. He is the author of many books including the 2016 Pulitzer prize winning book of poems Ozone Journal, the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand award in 1998 and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times best seller. Both prose books were New York Times Notable Books. Since 1980 he has taught at Colgate University where he is the Donald M and Constance H Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English and Director of Creative Writing.

The Burlington Liars' Club is an American organization that awards the title "World Champion Liar" annually. The club, located in Burlington, Wisconsin, has been bestowing the award since 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Arana</span> American journalist

Marie Arana is a Peruvian author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiyun Li</span> Chinese writer and professor

Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

Jacki Lyden is an American journalist and author of the memoir, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba (1999).

Eileen Welsome is an American journalist and author. She received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1994 while a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune for a 3-part story titled "The Plutonium Experiment" published beginning on November 15, 1993. She was awarded the prize for her articles about the government's human radiation experiments conducted on unwilling and unknowing Americans during the Cold War. Welsome also has received a George Polk Award, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Gold Medal, the Heywood Broun Award, as well as awards from the National Headliners Association and the Associated Press. In 1999, Welsome wrote the book The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. In 2000, Welsome received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and the PEN Center USA West Award in Research Nonfiction for The Plutonium Files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Jamison</span> American novelist and essayist

Leslie Sierra Jamison is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the 2010 novel The Gin Closet and the 2014 essay collection The Empathy Exams. Jamison also directs the nonfiction concentration in writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Susan Brind Morrow is an American author and poet who has written extensively on language and metaphor drawn from the natural world. Morrow has published translations of Greek, Latin, and Arabic poetry, and hieroglyphic texts.

<i>The Kiss</i> (memoir) 1997 memoir by Kathryn Harrison

The Kiss is a memoir by American author Kathryn Harrison. First published in 1997, the memoir details her relationship with her estranged father, which culminated in a sexual affair when they finally met again when she was an adult.

Awards presented by the PEN American Center that are no longer active.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayétu Moore</span> Liberian-American author

Wayétu Moore is a Liberian-American author and social entrepreneur. Her debut novel, She Would Be King, was published by Graywolf Press in September 2018, and was named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed. The novel was positively reviewed by Time Magazine, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Moore has published work in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Guernica Magazine, The Atlantic, and other journals. She was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship for fiction in 2019. Moore's memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, was named a 2020 New York Times Notable Book, a Time Magazine 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, and a Publishers Weekly Top 5 Nonfiction Books of 2020. In 2011, Moore founded a publishing house and nonprofit organization, One Moore Book, which publishes and distributes books intended for children in countries underrepresented in literature.

References

  1. Smith, Dinitia (June 27, 1995). "Gritty Book Sets Prudence Aside". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  2. Kakutani, Michiko (May 26, 2018). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; They're Liars, and That's Just the Least of Their Problems". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  3. "Inside the List" . Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  4. "Mary Karr - PEN America". pen.org. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  5. "Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction Winners". PEN American Center. Archived from the original on October 4, 2012.
  6. "The Liars' Club". MARY KARR. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  7. Karr, Mary (2005). The Liars' Club: A Memoir (10th anniversary ed.). New York: Penguin. ISBN   978-0143035749. OCLC   61332250.
  8. Donnelly, Erin (September 18, 2015). "Mary Karr On "The Art Of Memoir," Defending Lena Dunham & Her TV Plans". Refinery29. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  9. "Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs: 'No Doubt I've Gotten A Million Things Wrong'". NPR.org. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  10. "Observer review: Cherry by Mary Karr". the Guardian. 2001-06-24. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  11. "Review: Lit, by Mary Karr" . Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  12. 1 2 Ballantyne, Sheila (July 9, 1995). "The Thousand-Yard Stare". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  13. Karr, Mary (2005). The Liars' Club: A Memoir (10th anniversary ed.). New York: Penguin. pp.  177. ISBN   978-0143035749. OCLC   61332250.
  14. Yardley, Jonathan (June 18, 1995). "Book review: 'The Liar's Club' by Mary Karr". The Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2018-09-13.