August 2, 2010 • reading •

Book Talk: *Lit*, by Mary Karr (TLC Book Tour)

Disclosure: I received for the new paperback edition of this book review from the publisher, via TLC Book Tours. *I am an IndieBound Affiliate and Amazon Associate. Purchasing links in this post are provided by Indiebound.org and Amazon.com and will generate a small referral fee if used.*

Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr
Lit: A Memoir
Mary Karr
Harper Perennial (2010), Paperback (ISBN 0060596996 / 9780060596996)
Nonfiction/Memoir, 432 pages

Opening lines: “Any way I tell this story is a lie, so I ask you to disconnect the device in your head that repeats at intervals how ancient and addled I am. It’s true that – at fifty to your twenty – my brain is dimmer. Your engine of recall is way superior, as you’ve often pointed out.” (from “Prologue: Open Letter to My Son”)

Book description: 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.

Comments: Non-celebrity memoir has become particularly hot during the last decade or so, and Mary Karr’s first work in the genre, The Liars’ Club (1995) was one of the books that helped start that fire. Poetic, moving, and both darkly humorous and horrifying in its depiction of her seriously screwed-up Texas childhood, Karr’s story was compulsively readable. She continued it into adolescence in Cherry (2000), and brings her audience up to date in her most recent volume, Lit (2009), now out in paperback. I’ve read them all, and in my opinion, she saved the best for last.

As she entered adulthood, Karr was well aware of her problematic past, and tried to get as far away from it as she could while letting it continue to pull her back in. Following an erratic path to a writing life, she found herself in some unlikely situations – poet laureate of Minneapolis, for example – before landing in a New England graduate program and meeting the Ivy-League-educated, old-money poet she would eventually marry. Struggling with her own poetry and the challenges of a marriage of seeming unequals, her long habit of finding refuge in alcohol escalates, and motherhood complicates it more. Fighting the opposing pulls of addiction and sobriety eventually lands her in a mental institution, where she finally begins to accept that she needs to give the “higher power” her recovery supporters keep talking about a fair shot.

Lit‘s basic arc is familiar – downward spiral, hitting bottom, finding one’s way back up – but Karr’s telling of the story is all her own. While a successful memoir needs a compelling story – and through all of hers, Karr certainly has one – it’s her writing that has made her books stand out in the genre. It’s clear from her prose that her background is in poetry, and while I’m not a poetry fan, I found myself noting and appreciating her craft. That craft is put to use in sharing a personal history that I couldn’t identify with in all aspects – I’ve never been addicted to anything except books – but which was honest and revealing of thoughts and emotions that I could relate to. I think most mothers would recognize parts of Mary’s descriptions of early motherhood; some of us have experienced marital difficulties not unlike hers and “Warren’s”; and her reluctant, ambivalent approach to prayer and spirituality (even now) felt somewhat familiar to me. Karr is often hard on herself, and that was another thing I found familiar – and appealing.

Karr retells enough from her earlier memoirs that it’s not strictly necessary to read them before reading Lit. I have read them, but I don’t recall a lot of their details, and I have to admit I read them, at least in part, because they were “everybody’s talking about them” books. More universal than the earlier parts of her story, Lit‘s depiction of coming into adulthood, coming through darkness, and coming into peace is truthful and ultimately triumphant. This was the first of Karr’s memoirs that I truly wanted to read for the story she was telling, and I think it’s the one I’ll remember best (and would consider reading again).

Rating: 4/5
*Buy Lit: A Memoir from an Independent Bookseller*
*Buy Lit: A Memoir at Amazon.com*

Other stops on this TLC Book Tour:

Wednesday, July 7th: Book Club Classics
Monday, July 12th:  Rundpinne
Wednesday, July 14th:  Nonsuch Books
Thursday, July 15th:  Fizzy Thoughts
Thursday, July 22ed:  The Girl from the Ghetto
Tuesday, July 27th:  Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books
Wednesday, July 28th:  Chefdruck Musings
Thursday, July 29th:  Raging  Bibliomania
Friday, July 30th:  Chick Lit Reviews.com
Tuesday, August 3rd: Absorbed in Words
Wednesday, August 4th:  Sasha and the Silverfish
Thursday, August 5th:  Tales of a Capricious Reader

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