The Liars' Club
Subtitle: A Memoir
By: [by] Mary Karr.
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780670850532
Subjects: Karr, Mary -- Homes and haunts -- Texas -- Port Arthur.; Karr, Mary -- Childhood and youth.; Karr, Mary -- Family.; Poets, American -- 20th century -- Family relationships.; Family -- Texas -- Port Arthur.; Port Arthur (Tex.) -- Social life and customs.; Texas -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
Genres: Biography
First sentence: My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark.
Description: The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club. And to the girl whose father is the club's undisputed champion mythmaker, they exude a fatal glamour - one that lifts her from ordinary life.

But there are other lies. Darker, more hidden. Her mother's unimaginable past threatens the family's very sanity. Mary Karr looks back through younger eyes to exorcise those demons: a mad, puritanical grandmother; a vast inheritance squandered in one year flat; endless emptied bottles; and the darknesses inflicted on an eight-year-old girl. This voice explodes with antic, wit, stripped of self-pity. Miraculously, it makes a journey into joy. Here is a "terrific family of liars redeemed by a slow unearthing of truth."
Table of contents: label: I
title: Texas, 1961
pagenum: 1; label: II
title: Colorado, 1963
pagenum: 175; label: III
title: Texas Again, 1980
pagenum: 273