Karr's second memoir, Cherry: A Memoir (2000), details her tumultuous teenage years. Written in the same gritty, vulgar, and poetic style as The Liars' Club, Karr recounts her various escapades—many involving sex, romance, and drugs—as she attempts to break free from the confines of Leechfield, Texas. She casts a critical eye on her own mistakes as well as those of others.

Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (1996) followed The Liars' Club onto bestseller lists. McCourt narrates his impoverished childhood and adolescence during the 1930s and 1940s in Limerick, Ireland. The memoir is a lengthy account of deprivation and hardship, highlighting his father's alcoholism and his mother's despair. McCourt recounts these events without bitterness, anger, or blame, and many scenes are surprisingly humorous.

James Salter's Burning the Days: Recollection (1998) is a highly acclaimed memoir. Unlike the authors of The Liars' Club and Angela's Ashes, Salter enjoyed an upper-middle-class upbringing. In this memoir, he describes his experiences as a fighter pilot in the Korean War and his subsequent career in the film industry, traveling extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

Similar to The Liars' Club, Elizabeth Spencer's Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir (1997) chronicles a Southern upbringing, though in Mississippi rather than Texas. Spencer's narrative is more refined and less rugged than Karr's, reflecting on an earlier era (primarily the 1930s through the 1950s) with nostalgic affection.

Tobias Wolff, one of Karr's writing mentors, wrote This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989), which was highly praised by critics. Like Karr, Wolff recounts a challenging childhood in a dysfunctional family. However, his humor and literary prowess, much like Karr's, lighten the darkness of many of the events.