Screen LibraryLit : a memoir /
Overview: The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed black...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Harper Perennial,
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| Publisher Address: | New York, NY : |
| Publication Dates: |
2010. ©2009 |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Edition: | First Harper Perennial edition. |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
Overview: The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness-and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott," with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, "Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!" has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up-as only Mary Karr can tell it. One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2009. |
| Item Description: |
Originally published in hardcover: New York : Harper, 2009. Includes P.S. Insights, interviews & more: information about and interview with the author, other titles by the author, and the author's list of recommended nonfiction. |
| Carrier Form: | xii, 386, 20 pages ; 21 cm |
| Awards: | 10 best books, The New York Times Book Review |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: |
9780060596996 0060596996 |
| Index Number: | PS3561 |
| CLC: | K837.125.6 |
| Call Number: | K837.125.6 /M393 |
| Contents: | Prologue: Open letter to my son -- Side A: Now -- Side B: Then -- Escape From The Tropic Of Squalor: -- Lost in the golden state -- Mother of invention -- Lackluster college coed -- There's no biz like po-biz -- Never mind -- Flashdance: -- Inheritance tax summer -- Constant lovers -- Temporary help -- There when the bride -- Bound -- In search of incompetence -- Bent bender -- Homesick -- Inconceivable meets the conceivable -- Journey of the Magi -- Postal partum -- No mom is an island -- Self Help: -- Ivy Beleaguered -- Mokus squirreliness of the unmet mind -- My concept of commitment -- Grinning skull -- Mass eye -- Lather, rinse, repeat -- Affliction -- Reprieve -- Reluctantly baptized -- Untuned instrument -- Halfway home -- Ceremony (nonbelievers, read at your own risk: power and god ahead) -- Hour of lead -- Being Who Your Are Is Not A Disorder: -- Short history of my stupidity -- Nervous hospital -- Waking in the blue -- Sweet hereafter -- I accept a position -- Lake-effect humor -- Death of date-o-rama or the romance of the prose -- Lord of the flies -- God shopping -- Dysfunctional family sweepstakes -- It make a body wonder -- On the road -- Spiritual exercises of St Ignatius -- Bog queen -- My sinfulness in all its ugliness -- Acknowledgments -- Permissions. |