Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Karr, Mary - Cyra McFadden (review date 16 July 1995)

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Cyra McFadden (review date 16 July 1995)

SOURCE: McFadden, Cyra. “There's No Lie as Big as the Truth.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (16 July 1995): 1, 12.

[In the following review, McFadden discusses the themes of lies, truth, memory, and storytelling in The Liars' Club.]

Memoirs inhabit the middle ground between truth and fiction. They can't stick to the facts, and only the facts, because we don't remember past events as clearly as we remember how we felt about them, which is a different kind of truth. And sometimes, as in Mary Karr's memoir about her East Texas childhood, the events themselves are so bizarre, no novelist could get away with them. Who'd believe a grandmother so cruel that when she dies of cancer, 8-year-old Mary has to restrain herself from singing, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead”? An alcoholic mother who's been married seven times and as a hobby of sorts—she's bored to tears with small-town Texas—keeps...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Mary Karr (essay date 1991)
   2. Cyra McFadden (review date 16 July 1995)
   3. Scott Donaldson (review date 23 July 1995)
   4. Gaby Wood (review date 19 October 1995)
   5. Elizabeth Young (review date 20 October 1995)
   6. Kate Hubbard (review date 4 November 1995)
   7. William Harmon (review date winter 1997)
   8. Elizabeth Powers (essay date June 1997)
   9. M. Joy Gorence (review date September 1997)
   10. Barbara Jordan (review date 1998)
   11. Judith Kitchen (essay date winter 1998)
   12. Robert McDowell (essay date winter 1999)
   13. Leslie Ullman (review date February 1999)
   14. Eric Murphy Selinger (essay date 2000)
   15. Sue Churchill (review date winter 2000)
   16. Mary Karr and Wendy Smith (interview date 2 October 2000)
   17. Liz Marlantes (review date 12 October 2000)
   18. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 2 November 2000)
   19. Valerie Sayers (review date 3 November 2000)
   20. Alix Kates Shulman (review date December 2000)
   21. Sanford Pinsker (essay date spring 2001)
   22. Jennie Bristow (review date 25 June 2001)
   23. Vicki Woods (review date 30 June 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Joyce Carol Oates