Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Karr, Mary - Kate Hubbard (review date 4 November 1995)

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Kate Hubbard (review date 4 November 1995)

SOURCE: Hubbard, Kate. “Unhappy in Its Own Way.” Spectator 275, no. 8730 (4 November 1995): 49-50.

[In the following review, Hubbard compliments the “extraordinary vividness” of Karr's writing in The Liars' Club.]

To say that The Liars' Club is a memoir of a dysfunctional Texan family is both true and also reductive. The facts are harrowing—madness, alcoholism, sexual abuse—yet their narration, which crackles with wry humour, affection and defiance, is not. It is fired by a kind of fierce honesty, a determination to shun the comforting lies of memory and the lies which shrouded Mary Karr's childhood. Eschewing self-pity and blame, she tells it straight.

Home was Leechfield, a swampy, evil-smelling Texan oil town. Karr's father was an oil-worker and hunter—‘the proper blend of outlaw and citizen’, free with his punches and his affection, the star-turn of the...

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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