Mary Karr

In the prologue to her memoir Cherry, Karr describes herself leaving her childhood home, an oil refinery town on the East Texas Gulf Coast and striking out for the dream of California surf. When it quickly proves to be an impoverished and frightening nightmare, she heads for college and desperately tries to fit in. Unsuccessful at this, she tries drinking and running off. Fortunately she finds poetry and a mentor, and throws herself, reluctantly at first, into the literary life. A decade show more later however, marriage to another poet from a wealthy family, publication, academic success, and motherhood fail to bring her the escape she’s seeking. So she finds herself living for the anesthetic comfort of the bottle, but the bottle let her down.

“At the end of my drinking, the kingdom I longed for, slaved for, and a the end of each day lunged at was a rickety slab of unreal estate about four foot square—a back stair landing off my colonial outside Cambridge, Mass. I’d sit hunched against the door guzzling whisky and smoking Marlboros while wires from a tinny walkman piped blues into my head. Through hours there were frequently spent howling inwardly about the melting ice floe of my marriage, this spate of hours was the highlight of my day.” Page 7

Recovering alcoholics often say that there are only three possible outcomes of their addiction: You either end up locked-up, covered-up, or sober-up. Fortunately for American letters and herself, Karr sobered up. show less

That summer I fell into reading as into a deep well where no voice could reach me. There was a poem about a goat-footed balloon man I recited everyday like a spell, and another about somebody stealing somebody else's plums and saying he was sorry but not really meaning it. I read the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and fancied myself running away to Africa to find just such an ape man to swing me from vine to vine.

Mary Karr is best known for her memoir of a childhood spent in a rough show more and tumble Texas town. This is her follow up to that memoir, taking the reader through her teenage years. At the start of the story, Mary is a bookish girl in a place that did not value intelligence, and especially not in women. She eventually makes friends and then discovers both boys and drugs. It was the seventies and she quickly fell in with a group of surfer boys and their hangers-on, which suited her contrarian nature and need to push back against the often pointless authoritarianism of her high school. Her parents are not able to provide a good example or even rules, although they do occasionally come through when needed.

So you ride home strangely placated. You lack the wits to acknowledge the jail cell of the previous night. If you'd glanced back even once, given that arrest one hard look, a lot of onrushing trouble might have been staved off. show less

Reading this immediately after Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs may have instilled in me a false sense of expectation; that is, I was expecting every page to be filled with situations wholly disturbing, hysterical, and simultaneously saddening. Perhaps this expectation had more to do with the reviews on the softback copy describing Karr's "apocalyptic" childhood. Much to my initial disappointment (caused perhaps by a short-attention span), I found this not to be the case.

Karr has show more a way of easing her readers into the tragedies her childhood, which was spent mainly in Hurricane-laden western Texas with a few years' stint in Colorado. She waxes poetic over her early life, finding beauty where most people wouldn't while remaining childishly fiendish. Because of this, when the proverbially shit hits the fan, it will probably knock the wind out of you.

Karr's ability to present deplorable situations while remaining optimistic (and often times funny) is admirable. She has been exposed to a torrid of abuse that no child should go through and has come out on top. Unlike many memoirs focusing on child abuse, the enforcers of her pain varies from family members, to acquaintances, and to neighbors. The amount of abuse piled on to one individual would normally make for a wholly depressing read, but Karr asks for no pity, and somehow manages to entertain and horrify at the same time.

The final selling-point for me is Karr's honesty. Being a memoir, readers normally expect a certain amount of BS. Of course, not every single detail will be remembered, so understandably, liberties will be taken. What is unique to Karr's form is the fact that she will flat-out tell the reader when her thinking is getting fuzzy and will speculate over what may or may not have happened. This also lends to the gripping nature of the book, as she seems to become hyper-aware of every second of particularly gruesome memories.

This book is certainly not for the faint of heart. There are disturbances that range from verbal, to physical, to sexual abuse involving a very young girl. These are certain to turn the stomach of anybody with a heart. However, Karr takes her readers by the hand and guides them, constantly reminding them that while everything didn't turn out all right, there's still beauty to be found in her family--it simply needs to be dug up. show less

Naked. Raw. Unflinching. Brilliant. And oh-so-Southern. I'm assuming Karr's family is as crazy-Southern as she paints them to be, and likewise figuring she's a bit less of a pill than she makes herself out as. And, while I feel ugly for enjoying what an awful childhood she had, well, I can't also help feeling grateful that she lived to write about it. What a wonderful, wonderful read. I'd never been interested in "memoirs" before... but if any of them are half as good as Karr's I may have show more just found a new genre to enjoy. show less