The Liars’ Club (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Mary Karr
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Memoir
- Time of Work: 1961-1980
- Setting: East Texas and Colorado
- Principal Characters: Mary Karr, Lecia Karr, Charlie Marie Karr, J. P. Karr
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir
- Subjects: Family or family life, Parents and children, Marriage, Abandoned children, Mental illness, Violence, Divorce, Drinking or drunkenness
- Locales: Colorado, Texas
Mary Karr’s memoir, consisting largely of scenes from her East Texas and Colorado childhood, works brilliantly on a number of levels. It is riveting first of all as narrative, a meandering river of humorous, harrowing, poignant, and deeply interesting stories. It is poetic as well, its images evoking a gritty physical reality sharply flavored by the locutions of the author’s origins. Full of casual violence, dislocation, fragmentation, it is social and psychological drama with a strikingly American slant. At the end, in the deepest and most satisfying sense, it is a fairy tale,...
[The entire page is 2109 words long]
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