Critical Praise

"The essential American story.... The Liars' Club is a beauty. "

—— Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"A triumphant achievement in the art of memoir and the art of living.... Karr fills her turbulent pages with a prose as pungent and zesty as a Gulf Coast gumbo. "

——Newsday

"Crackles with energy and wit...a wild and wooly contribution to the annals of American childhood. "

—The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Her literary instincts are extraordinary.... Karr has the poet's gift for finding something huge and unsayable in a single image...gothic wit and stunning clarity of memory. "

—The Boston Globe

"The Liars' Club is a classic of American literature.... Mary Karr conjures the simmering heat and bottled rage of life in a small Texas oil town with an intensity that gains power from the fact that it's fact. "

—— James Atlas, The New York Times Magazine

"An astonishing book.... Her most powerful tool is her language, which she wields with the virtuosity of both a lyric poet and an earthy, down-home Texan.... One of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years. "

—— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"This book is so good I thought about sending it out for a back-up opinion.... It's like finding Beethoven in Hoboken. To have a poet's precision of language and a poet's gift for understanding emotion and a poet's insight into people applied to one of the roughest, toughest, ugliest places in America is an astounding event. "

—— Molly Ivins, The Nation