Like a feverish dream (or nightmare), Karr's first memoir unfolds in a stream-of-consciousness style which captures what it's like to be a child growing up in a spectacularly dysfunctional household. Karr's gullibility, loneliness, fear, and audacity will be recognizable to many people--even if they had relatively happy childhoods. What struck a chord with me was Karr's relationship with her older sister, Lecia. Being an older sister myself, I know that having a sibling can be one of the best things and also one of the worst things about growing up.

If you like this book, I'd also recommend checking out Cherry, Karr's follow-up memoir about her adolescence. ( )

Gripping memoir of a girlhood in East Texas and Colorado. Born to an alcoholic but functional father and a mother who bounces between full blown alcoholism and active psychosis, the author and her older sister largely raise themselves. When their parents finally divorce, the girls opt to live with the mother, figuring she'd get into too much trouble if left unsupervised. But she and her new sleazeball husband prove too big a challenge for the girls.
The book is both captivating and terrifying. Imagine the voice of Scout Finch relating the To Kill a Mockingbird plotline with periodic appearances by Hannibal Lechter. That's The Liars' Club.
This is the first of Mary Karr's three memoirs. I'm eagerly looking forward to the second and third. ( )

It took me awhile, but I finally figured out that the liberal midwestern college that she attended and didn't finish is my liberal midwestern alma mater. ( )

Karr is a poet, and it shows in the terse strength of her prose. Her childhood was unspeakable in parts -- I couldn't read the second event of horrific sexual abuse -- and entertaining in others. Highly recommended. ( )

I don’t know what made me pick up this memoir one afternoon; I was sitting on the couch and it was right at eye level and I realized I hadn’t read a memoir in a while, and next thing I knew I was halfway through it. It pulled me right in, this story of a girl growing up in the poorest part of East Texas in a crazy family with an educated, intellectual, artistically-oriented mother and a completely blue-collar, beer-drinking, hard-working father. Every moment feels absolutely authentic. It is told with that open-eyed, taking-it-all-in-ness of childhood, when what one lives feels normal no matter how odd it may be in the retrospect of adulthood. The Liar’s Club is a small masterpiece. ( )