Book Overview

Lit is Mary Karr's third memoir. Her first, The Liar's Club, chronicled her toxic childhood in Texas and her volatile relationship with her artistic, raging, alcoholic mother and sad, distant, drunken father. Her second memoir, Cherry, covered her adolescence and sexual coming-of-age. In her third memoir, she writes about her adult life—college, career, marriage and motherhood—and her struggle to overcome her childhood wounds and alcoholism.

The book opens with a letter to her son Dev and two short vignettes that set the framework for the story to come. In one of the vignettes, Karr describes herself as a young mother too drunk to see straight, shivering outside on the small porch while chain-smoking and drinking whiskey and promising to change the burnt-out light bulb on the porch tomorrow. Yet when tomorrow comes, the mother finds herself once again shivering in the night air, drinking, smoking and promising once again to change the light bulb. In this one short chapter, Karr sets the tone for the entire memoir.

The narrative starts right before Karr's college years and progresses chronologically through her life—her struggle to be a poet and writer, her failed marriage to another poet who grew up in a wealthy but emotionally distant family, her struggles with motherhood, her years of therapy and attempts to come to terms with each of her parents, her desperate struggle with alcohol and then her long and painful process to become sober—which included a stop in a mental hospital. But strip away the rest of it, and this books is really about an alcoholic's struggle to become sober and finding God along the way. It is also about Karr's attempts to make peace with her mother, whose love she never felt sure of and whose personality shaped so much of what she ended up being as a mother and a woman.

My Thoughts

The Liar's Club was one of the first memoirs I ever read and pretty much set the bar for all memoirs I read afterward. The book is powerful and made me realize what memoirs could be. Although she provides a sort of coda at the end of The Liar's Club, you still end up wondering how she survived her childhood and want to know more about the family's fate. This book provides those answers and is a must read for anyone who read The Liar's Club.

What makes Mary Karr's memoirs stand out from the pack is her writing. She has a true gift for language and a bluntness that serves her well. She is exceedingly honest in her self-assessment and spares herself nothing. Yet she manages to convey all the ugliness of her life in this beautiful prose that left me marveling. Here are just a few of the passages that I marked while reading.

On her feelings about the power of poetry:

Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air, a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.

On describing how she slowly began to see the power of God in her life:

This is what an unbeliever might call self-hypnosis; a believer might say it's the presence of God. Let's call it a draw and concede that the process of listing my good fortune stopped my scrambling fear, and in relinquishing that, some solid platform slid under me.

On beginning to write again after a long absence:

The writing has come back—with a polished quiet around it. Somehow I feel freer to fail. But the work mortifies me. Previously I'd seen the poems as adorable offspring, but they've become the most pathetic bunch of little bow-legged, snaggle-toothed pinheads imaginable. Even the book I published with such pride a few years before—eager to foist it on anybody who'd read it—now seems egregiously dull, sophomoric, phony. If the pages were big enough, I might as well use them to wrap fish.

I think at its core, this book is about Mary Karr's struggle to become sober and accept God in her life. Throughout the book—as her drinking leads to more and more problems—she tries to run from the demons of her past. Yet when she is finally scared into trying to stop drinking, she fights the help of a Higher Power tooth and nail. As she begrudgingly begins to accept what her sober friends tell her—that accepting God (in whatever way you perceive God) is the only way to true sobriety and peace—she takes you step by step through her conversion process and it is incredibly revealing and powerful. More than any other book I've read, I think this book probably makes the best case for the power of prayer and why God's presence can make a difference in a life.

My Final Recommendation

If you've read The Liar's Club, you really must read this book to get the rest of Mary Karr's story and how her relationship with her mother resolves itself. (The chapter at the end of the book where she moves her elderly mother out of her falling down house and into a condominium was an incredibly powerful piece of writing.)

If you've struggled with drinking and been distrustful of the role that prayer and a Higher Power can play in getting sober, this book is a must read as it presents the unvarnished truth about Mary Karr's struggle to get sober and her initial distrust and eventual acceptance of the role of God in her life. Readers will appreciate her skepticism because it makes her eventual conversion all the more believable and powerful.

If you enjoy reading memoirs, Mary Karr has both the life and the writing skills to make a top-notch memoir that is both literary and down-to-earth. This isn't the easiest book to read as the subject matter is often sad and disturbing; yet, at the same time, it is often filled with humor and a "humanness" that speaks to us all. Although it took me a while to read (as I often needed a break from it due to the often depressing story), I felt it was well worth my time, and it left me thinking about spirituality and the power of prayer. ( )

Reading Mary Karr’s latest memoir, "Lit," is akin to catching up with an old friend over a cup of coffee or, perhaps in this case, over something a bit stronger than coffee. Karr’s earlier memoirs, "The Liars’ Club" (1995), which covered her childhood years, and "Cherry" (2000), the story of her adolescence and early adulthood, established for her a well deserved reputation as an exceptional memoirist. Now, some nine years after "Cherry," Karr completes her story, for now, by revealing how she managed to overcome the odds to escape both the insular little town in which she grew up and the quirky upbringing she endured there.

One thing is certain; Mary Karr has not had an easy time of it. Growing up in a muggy, mosquito ridden little East Texas refinery town, one in which its residents breathe polluted air no matter from which direction it blows (as I well remember), she was raped by a teenaged neighbor when she was eight years old. Her father, a heavy drinking refinery worker, loved her dearly but was not exactly a role model for his daughters. Her seven-times-married, artistic mother was a bit of a desperado in spirit who struggled with a tendency toward full-blown psychotic episodes throughout much of her life.

As she so frankly details in "Lit," Mary Karr is a combination of the good and the bad components of both her parents. Always a bit of a rebel at heart like her mother, she went into the world resenting those born to wealth as much as her father disliked them, taking pride that she could at least outdrink those who “had been born on third base” but who believed “they hit a home run.” And outdrink them, Mary did - all the way to the point of her own debilitating struggle with alcoholism, a struggle that would steal years of her life and ultimately destroy the marriage that produced her son.

It was a close thing, but Mary managed to save herself, and she accomplished it by doing something so completely out of character for her that it still surprises her. She turned to prayer and organized religion despite a lifetime spent scoffing at both. Despairing and suicidal, she committed herself to what she calls “The Mental Marriott” and the timeout there that would ultimately lead her to place her future in the hands of God, the possibility of whose existence she previously had not been able to take seriously. "Lit" is a word of several meanings when it comes to Mary Karr. It can be a reference to her success in the literary world or it can be used to describe the drunken state in which she spent so many of her waking hours for so many years. Finally, and most hopefully, it also describes the religious experience that saved Mary Karr’s life when she finally “saw the light.”

Fans of Karr’s previous memoirs will be pleased with this inspirational addition to her story, but "Lit" also works well for those reading her for the first time, so well that I suspect the new Karr readers will now want to turn to the first two books.

Rated at: 5.0 ( )

Mary Karr’s Lit is magnificent. It completes her life story as began in The Liar’s Club and Cherry by detailing her marriage, motherhood, her battle with alcoholism and her rise as a literary talent. In this memoir Karr achieves a forceful honesty that holds nothing back in her self examination. Because she is a poet, one expects her writing to compel in story as much as language and will not be disappointed. Sometimes I felt as if I was actually experiencing Karr’s moments right beside her. Instead I felt lucky to be able to read a book that is certain to become a classic. And is sure to please faithful fans and transfix legions of new readers. ( )

Honest, extraordinarily well written memoir -- just what you'd expect from the author of "The Liars' Club." This time, Karr tells the story of her journey into adulthood -- including marriage, motherhood, alcoholism, sobriety, divorce, religious faith and ultimately literary and commercial success. It's a harrowing tale but she makes it pretty funny at times. Even if you're not a big memoir reader -- I'm not -- this one is worth the time. ( )

I make it a point to avoid any reviews of books that I am reading to review…but I can’t imagine that they don’t all say similar things about “Lit”. The words that come to mind are “brutally honest”…but that’s not quite right. Even though she recounts some truly horrifying events in her life, the effect isn’t brutal. I suppose “unflinchingly honest” is closer...but even that doesn’t capture the feeling of this book.

Karr’s words just seem so human. She talks about such sad, hurtful and scary things in her life…and though I am lucky enough to not have much real life experience with those events, they are told in such a way that I am able to relate to her and feel real empathy towards her. She makes terrible mistakes in her life, and yet, I certainly don’t condemn her. It’s as if she’s laid herself out to the reader in such a way that one realizes that our forgiveness (while unnecessary) is far easier to earn than the forgiveness of her toughest enemy…herself.

“It’s taken me so much effort just to do as medium-sh***y as I’ve heretofore done. Just to drop out of college, stay alive, and have my teeth taken care of.”

Her words have an interesting effect…one can almost feel the Mary Karr experiencing the moment in the past – being watched over and commented on by the Mary Karr that exists in the present writing about that moment. There’s an essence of both women in the tone of the words, and both perspectives are heartfelt.

“Touching that triangle of yellowed paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by with all the wholesome prosperity they represent. And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message Mom ½ , written in laundry pen, since no one in our family ever stood on ceremony.”

I felt a bit anxious as I read her story…like I was watching someone wander around on the freeway – I kept wanting to pull her away from the oncoming traffic and keep her safe; especially during the worst times.

“I find myself squatting in the bedroom closet with two incongruent bottles, whiskey and Listerine – the latter with accompanying spit bowl. Despite the dark, it feels safe in here, leaning against the back wall with clothes before my face.”

There’s such a ferocity to many of her feelings, you can’t help but root for her to find her way out of the dark. “And that’s it, that instant. My life as I’ve shaped it includes – for that instant only – the daddy I once loved more than beans and rice.”

And there’s a beauty to her words as well, especially when she is talking about her son. “Maybe you could loan me some of the shine in your young head to clear up my leftover dark spaces. Just as you’re blameless for the scorched part of your childhood, I’m equally exonerated for my own mother’s nightmare.”

Towards the end of the book, I began to realize there was more to the title of the book than the slang definition of the word. I began to see that Karr was going to be successful at fighting off the dark. That instead of searching for the answer at the bottom of a bottle, she might find it in the depths of her soul.

This book is a triumph of words and of spirit. And even though it involves finding religion…there isn’t one preachy or false word about it. It’s again the humanity, the honesty of her words that make them ring true.

To experience the story of a person who goes from this: “The warmth beaming from her face can’t reach me. I’m too bent over some rotted core, as if to protect it from her.”

to this: “Such vast quiet holds me, and the me I’ve been so lifelong worried about shoring up just dissolves like ash in water. Just isn’t. In its place is this clean air. There’s a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that’s a perfect zero you can go into.”

Lit…it’s a perfect title for this journey, fits both bookends of the story, and captures the true luminosity of Mary Karr’s words. ( )