Lit - Large Print by Mary Karr (Paperback)

About the Book

Mary Karr's bestselling, unforgettable sequel to her beloved memoirs The Liars' Club and Cherry--and one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year--Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live.

The Boston Globe calls Lit a book that "reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." The New York Times Book Review calls it "a master class on the art of the memoir" in its Top 10 Books of 2009 Citation. Michiko Kakutani calls it "a book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won't let you go" in her New York Times review. And Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is "the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."

In addition to the New York Times, Lit was named a Best Book of 2009 by the New Yorker (Reviewer Favorite), Entertainment Weekly (Top 10), Time (Top 10), the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Seattle Times.

Book Synopsis

Mary Karr's bestselling, unforgettable sequel to her beloved memoirs The Liars' Club and Cherry--and one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year--Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live.

The Boston Globe calls Lit a book that "reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." The New York Times Book Review calls it "a master class on the art of the memoir" in its Top 10 Books of 2009 Citation. Michiko Kakutani calls it "a book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won't let you go" in her New York Times review. And Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is "the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."

In addition to the New York Times, Lit was named a Best Book of 2009 by the New Yorker (Reviewer Favorite), Entertainment Weekly (Top 10), Time (Top 10), the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Seattle Times.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

"[Karr] seems to have been born with the inability to write a dishonest-or boring-sentence." - Lev Grossman, Time (Top 10 Citation)

"A brutally honest, sparkling story." - Glamour

"Affecting.... Karr's lurch toward faith is narrated with her familiar irreverence and humor, but this tone does not preclude a more heartfelt expression of the value of faith." - The New Yorker

"No one should be surprised to find a certain combination of gut-spilling emotional volatility along with the survivor's keen ability to detach far enough to tell a rollicking story. But the book is more than a recovery memoir. Karr writes unflinchingly about marriage, class, guilt, and the struggle to make peace with her raw, melodramatic, yet wildly interesting past." - NPR

"A master class on the art of the memoir. Mordantly funny, free of both self pity and sentimentality, Karr describes her attempts to untether herself from troubled family in rural Texas, her development as a poet and writer, and her struggles to navigate marriage and young motherhood even as she descends into alcoholism." - New York Times Book Review, Top 10 Books Citation

"Mary Karr restores memoir form's dignity with Lit." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Irresistible. . . . [Written] with trademark wit, precision, and unfailing courage." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Searing. . . . A book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won't let you go. . . . Chronicles with searching intelligence, humor and grace the author's slow, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes painful discovery of her vocation and her voice as a poet and writer." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Scrappy, gut-wrenching. . . . Irresistible. . . . [Written] with trademark wit, precision, and unfailing courage." - Pam Houston, O Magazine

"There isn't a single false note in Lit." - Carmela Ciuraru, Christian Science Monitor

"With this third book Karr has managed to raise the bar higher still on the genre of memoir." - Steve Ross, Huffington Post

"[Karr] continues to delight with her signature dark humor and pitch-perfect metaphors delivering large doses of wit and painful insights. . . . There are plenty of memoirs about being drunk, but this one has Karr's voice-both sure-footed and breezy-behind it." - Beth Greenfield, Time Out New York

"Mary Karr has never lacked for material. But she's always delivered on the craft side, too, with her poet's gift for show-and-tell." - Elizabeth Foy Larsen, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Mary Karr restores memoir form's dignity with Lit." - Vanity Fair

"Karr could tell you what's on her grocery list, and its humor would make you bust a gut, its unexpected insights would make you think and her pitch-perfect command of our American vernacular might even take your breath away.... [Karr] holds the position of grande dame memoirista." - Samantha Dunn, Los Angeles Times

"As irresistible as it is unflinchingly honest. . . . With grace, saltiness and profanity galore, Karr undeniably re-establishes herself as one of our finest memoirists and storytellers." - Melanie Gideon, San Francisco Chronicle

"Dazzling. . . . Lit reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." - Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe

"A redemptive, painfully funny story." - Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"Karr movingly depicts her halting journey into AA, making it clear her grit and spirit remain intact." - People

"Karr's sharp and funny sensibility won me over to her previous two volumes, but what wins me over to Lit is the way her acute self-awareness conquers any hint that hers is the only version of this story. . . . As with all stories that surprise us, the specificity of the account gives it its punch. . . . The language often captures, precisely, the tension between the intellectual and the emotional, the artistic and the spiritual. This is a story not just of alcoholism but of coming to terms with families past and present." - Valery Sayers, Washington Post

"What distinguishes Karr's book from most others . . . is her mordant humor and exceptional writing. Throughout, her descriptions are startling and poetic. . . . This is a truly harrowing story, but so poetically written that unlike many memoirs, the material seems riveting rather than repugnant. And not once does the author paint herself as the heroine of her own life. (There isn't a single false note in Lit.) Her hard-won contentment is inspiring, and above all, miraculous." - Carmela Ciuraru, Christian Science Monitor

"Lit matches its predecessors in candor and outstrips them in insight." - Commonweal

"Karr writes with such intensity and poetry. . . . This struggle to reconcile her past and present, her family and her future, is the steel-wired ribbon that not only runs through this affecting book, but that also connects it to Ms. Karr's two earlier memoirs--the bright, elastic thread on which she so deftly strings the colored beads of her tumultuous life." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Karr could tell you what's on her grocery list, and its humor would make you bust a gut, its unexpected insights would make you think and her pitch-perfect command of our American vernacular might even take your breath away. . . . The Guggenheim Fellow in poetry holds the position of grande dame memoirista." - Samantha Dunn, Los Angeles Times

"In a gravelly, ground-glass-under-your-heel voice that can take you from laughter to awe in a few sentences, Karr has written the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years." - Susan Cheever, New York Times Book Review

"[Karr] manages to report her self-imposed decline in a blunt and darkly humorous voice that is as irresistible as it is unflinchingly honest. . . . Lit is a testament to the healing power of love that beats at the heart of every good story." - Melanie Gideon, San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the best memoirists of her generation. . . . She is, as always, unsparing in her honesty and humanity. . . . [A] radiant, rueful, rip-roaring book. . . . [Karr writes] with a rare vividness, humor, and candor. . . . Warm enough to burn a hole in your heart. A." - Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly

"[Karr] writes with a singular combination of poetic grace and Texan verve, which allows her to present the experiences as fresh, but she also brings a potent, self-condemning honesty and a palpable sense of responsibility and regret to the narrative. . . . An absolute gem that secures Karr's place as one of the best memoirists of her generation." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review