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Cherry
When Mary Karr began the mid-'90s memoir craze with The Liars' Club, she introduced us to a scrappy, funny kid with a fierce intelligence, a ruthless curiosity, and an indelible stripe of defiance. In Cherry, that kid -- still called Pokey by her father -- is older and wilder, inching closer and closer to trouble with every paragraph.
The book opens with Mary's farewell to her father as she prepares to leave for L.A. as a teenager with little more than a hundred dollars, a newfound taste for drugs, and a single-minded determination to leave the dusty town of Leechfield, Texas where she grew up. While her mother pages through an art book in the kitchen and disinterestedly encourages her to go, her father offers her breakfast, then forbids her to leave: "You need to stay right here at forty-nine-oh-one Garfield. California's ass."
This moment distills Karr's childhood and adolescence nicely, describing the benign inattention of her mother that shaped her independence and her father's tenderness and befuddlement in the face of it. Karr's defiance is coupled, even as a child, with a stubborn refusal of all pity, but Karr's talent is such that we see young Mary's charm and vulnerability through her toughness. Cherry chronicles many such moments, from Mary's defiant topless bicycle ride through the neighborhood to her near-expulsion from high school for failing to wear the proper undergarments.
In fact, Mary's school years are a rich lode of both pathos and humor. When she's hauled to the principal's office (in just one of many visits) for questioning the need to study algebra, he tells her sternly, "I assure you. Without math, you'll wind up being no more than a common prostitute." Mary knows, however, that she wants to be a poet, and no amount of math will stop her. In high school, she finally meets someone smarter than she is, as enraptured by literature and as stifled by Leechfield as she is. Karr's descriptions of this friendship are richly satisfying, since we've been hoping from the beginning of Cherry for Mary to find a companion worthy of her gritty tenderness.
By the end of Cherry, we know Mary's headed for trouble in some way, and everyone else seems to know it, too -- even her mother, who blithely encourages her to experiment sexually and charms a judge out of punishing Mary for drug possession. But for Karr, the choice between trouble in the big wide world and trouble at home in Leechfield seems an obvious one. Like her parents, by the end of Cherry we're both rooting for her as she slams the screen door behind her and wishing she'd never leave.
--Julie Robichaux
483 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
412 people are currently reading
10500 people want to read
About the author
Mary Karr
27 books2,092 followersMary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University.
Karr was born January 16, 1955, in Groves, a small town in East Texas located in the Port Arthur region, known for its oil refineries and chemical plants, to J. P. and Charlie Marie (Moore) Karr. In her memoirs, Karr calls the town "Leechfield." Karr's father worked in an oil refinery while her mother was an amateur artist and business owner.
The Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year, and was named one of the year's best books. It delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty, industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. She was encouraged to write her personal history by her friend, author Tobias Wolff, but has said she only took up the project when her marriage fell apart.
She followed the book with another memoir, Cherry (2000), about her late adolescence and early womanhood. A third memoir, Lit, which she says details "my journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic," came out in November 2009.
Karr thinks of herself first and foremost as a poet. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry: Abacus (Wesleyan University Press, CT, 1987, in its New Poets series), The Devil's Tour (New Directions NY, 1993, an original TPB), Viper Rum (New Directions NY, 1998, an original TPB), and her new volume Sinners Welcome (HarperCollins, NY 2006). Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.
She is a controversial figure in the American poetry "establishment," thanks to her Pushcart-award winning essay, "Against Decoration," which was originally published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991) and later reprinted in Viper Rum. In this essay Karr took a stand in favor of content over poetic style. She argued emotions need to be directly expressed, and clarity should be a watch-word: characters are too obscure, the presented physical world is often "foggy" (that is imprecise), references are "showy" (both non-germane and overused), metaphors over-shadow expected meaning, and techniques of language (polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives") only "slow a reader"'s understanding. Karr directly criticized well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren). Karr favors controlled elegance to create transcendent poetic meaning out of not-quite-ordinary moments, presenting James Merrill's Charles on Fire as a successful example.
While some ornamentations Karr rails against are due to shifting taste, she believes much is due to the revolt against formalism which substituted sheer ornamentation for the discipline of meter. Karr notes Randall Jarrell said much the same thing, albeit more decorously, nearly fifty years ago. Her essay is meant to provide the technical detail to Jarrell's argument. As a result of this essay Karr earned a reputation for being both courageous and combative, a matured version of the BB-gun toting little hellion limned in The Liars' Club.
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer", was originally published in Poetry (2005). Karr tells of moving from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic of the decidedly "cafeteria" kind, yet one who prays twice daily with loud fervor from her "foxhole". In this essay Karr argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us.
Karr was born January 16, 1955, in Groves, a small town in East Texas located in the Port Arthur region, known for its oil refineries and chemical plants, to J. P. and Charlie Marie (Moore) Karr. In her memoirs, Karr calls the town "Leechfield." Karr's father worked in an oil refinery while her mother was an amateur artist and business owner.
The Liars' Club, published in 1995, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year, and was named one of the year's best books. It delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty, industrial section of Southeast Texas in the 1960s. She was encouraged to write her personal history by her friend, author Tobias Wolff, but has said she only took up the project when her marriage fell apart.
She followed the book with another memoir, Cherry (2000), about her late adolescence and early womanhood. A third memoir, Lit, which she says details "my journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic," came out in November 2009.
Karr thinks of herself first and foremost as a poet. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. Karr has published four volumes of poetry: Abacus (Wesleyan University Press, CT, 1987, in its New Poets series), The Devil's Tour (New Directions NY, 1993, an original TPB), Viper Rum (New Directions NY, 1998, an original TPB), and her new volume Sinners Welcome (HarperCollins, NY 2006). Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.
She is a controversial figure in the American poetry "establishment," thanks to her Pushcart-award winning essay, "Against Decoration," which was originally published in the quarterly review Parnassus (1991) and later reprinted in Viper Rum. In this essay Karr took a stand in favor of content over poetic style. She argued emotions need to be directly expressed, and clarity should be a watch-word: characters are too obscure, the presented physical world is often "foggy" (that is imprecise), references are "showy" (both non-germane and overused), metaphors over-shadow expected meaning, and techniques of language (polysyllables, archaic words, intricate syntax, "yards of adjectives") only "slow a reader"'s understanding. Karr directly criticized well-known, well-connected, and award-winning poets such as James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren). Karr favors controlled elegance to create transcendent poetic meaning out of not-quite-ordinary moments, presenting James Merrill's Charles on Fire as a successful example.
While some ornamentations Karr rails against are due to shifting taste, she believes much is due to the revolt against formalism which substituted sheer ornamentation for the discipline of meter. Karr notes Randall Jarrell said much the same thing, albeit more decorously, nearly fifty years ago. Her essay is meant to provide the technical detail to Jarrell's argument. As a result of this essay Karr earned a reputation for being both courageous and combative, a matured version of the BB-gun toting little hellion limned in The Liars' Club.
Another essay, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer", was originally published in Poetry (2005). Karr tells of moving from agnostic alcoholic to baptized Catholic of the decidedly "cafeteria" kind, yet one who prays twice daily with loud fervor from her "foxhole". In this essay Karr argues that poetry and prayer arise from the same sources within us.
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October 28, 2018I approached Cherry under the impression that it was the lesser of Karr's memoirs - word of mouth and general internet criticism had led me to believe that it didn't have the power of The Liar's Club . But by page 25 of this book I was already convinced that Cherry is actually the more complex and ambitious of the two books. Alternating between the second and first person, Cherry evokes a more universally nostalgic exploration of high school girl-hood, one that is richer and braver than the particularities of Karr's life in The Liar's Club . It's one thing to attempt to write about your life, it's another thing to attempt to write about your life in a way that speaks to every girl who has ever been in high school. This is precisely what Karr is attempting to do with her use of the second person pronoun. It is a risky and wildly ambitious move, and she fucking nails it. "Laugh out loud" is a phrase that's grossly overused these days, but it applies here. Cherry is one of the best memoirs I've read in years.
January 14, 2016
Good men want a virgin
So don't you give yourself too soon
'Cept in an emergency
Like underneath the moon.*
"I am not very successful as a little girl. When I grow up, I will probably be a mess."
from the eleven-year-old Mary Karr's diary
It's been more than twenty years since I read Karr's first memoir, The Liars' Club. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it, though the only part I really remember is a very young Mary Karr, while on a bus trip with her sister, smacking the man in front of her on the head with a naked Barbie doll. That still cracks me up to this day. Confession time - I've always wanted to do that!
This book is an inside look at Karr's teenage years. Growing up in the shadow of a "more perfect" older sister, she struggled to fit in with her peers and seems to have had a lonely life as an early teen. Her description of angling for a slumber party invite is heartbreaking to read, as is her unrequited love/lust for a neighbor boy. Oh, ho ho - have I ever been there and done that.
You spend a whole night writing an elaborate suicide note, in which you list every minor gripe and oversight. Just thinking how bad they'll feel reading this note makes you cry, but you keep on writing, letting big tears splash the page so they'll know how bad you felt.
Mary Karr, age 15
Around age fifteen, Karr connects with another girl who shares her love of reading. I enjoyed this odd friendship. There's plenty of book and poetry talk to devour. Then
S-E-X rears its throbbing head. (Hey, if you're NOT curious at this age, there's something wrong with you.)
You look back at Mother after a long silence, and she says, with no segue whatsoever, If you want to have sex, so be it. Just don't get pregnant.
Mother! you say with all the virginal outrage you can marshal given the amount of time you spend reading Henry Miller in the bathroom.
But when Karr was a teen, virginity was a prize to be bestowed upon the worthy.
She knows that pussy is a high-ticket item right up until and during the night you relinquish it. Then it becomes a commodity and you along with it - with no more value added than frozen OJ or pork belly.
While the quest to lose one's virginity interests me, drugs do not, and unfortunately, the second half of the book is all about getting high.
Yawn.
So only three-stars because drugs are WAY LESS interesting than sex. (Remember that, kids! Don't do drugs!)
This is one of those books that I've had for a long time, so long in fact, I've forgotten where it came from. It wasn't til I decided to read it last week that I noticed it's signed by the author. Awesome! What's even better is the inscription . . .
Lois
For a great sister-in-law -------
Mary Karr
Yeah, such a great sister-in-law that the book you gave her somehow ended up on my shelf.
Let's just hope that didn't happen until after you divorced Lois's brother, eh, Mary?
*Underneath the Moon by Margaret A. Roche
So don't you give yourself too soon
'Cept in an emergency
Like underneath the moon.*
"I am not very successful as a little girl. When I grow up, I will probably be a mess."
from the eleven-year-old Mary Karr's diary
It's been more than twenty years since I read Karr's first memoir, The Liars' Club. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it, though the only part I really remember is a very young Mary Karr, while on a bus trip with her sister, smacking the man in front of her on the head with a naked Barbie doll. That still cracks me up to this day. Confession time - I've always wanted to do that!
This book is an inside look at Karr's teenage years. Growing up in the shadow of a "more perfect" older sister, she struggled to fit in with her peers and seems to have had a lonely life as an early teen. Her description of angling for a slumber party invite is heartbreaking to read, as is her unrequited love/lust for a neighbor boy. Oh, ho ho - have I ever been there and done that.
You spend a whole night writing an elaborate suicide note, in which you list every minor gripe and oversight. Just thinking how bad they'll feel reading this note makes you cry, but you keep on writing, letting big tears splash the page so they'll know how bad you felt.
Mary Karr, age 15
Around age fifteen, Karr connects with another girl who shares her love of reading. I enjoyed this odd friendship. There's plenty of book and poetry talk to devour. Then
S-E-X rears its throbbing head. (Hey, if you're NOT curious at this age, there's something wrong with you.)
You look back at Mother after a long silence, and she says, with no segue whatsoever, If you want to have sex, so be it. Just don't get pregnant.
Mother! you say with all the virginal outrage you can marshal given the amount of time you spend reading Henry Miller in the bathroom.
But when Karr was a teen, virginity was a prize to be bestowed upon the worthy.
She knows that pussy is a high-ticket item right up until and during the night you relinquish it. Then it becomes a commodity and you along with it - with no more value added than frozen OJ or pork belly.
While the quest to lose one's virginity interests me, drugs do not, and unfortunately, the second half of the book is all about getting high.
Yawn.
So only three-stars because drugs are WAY LESS interesting than sex. (Remember that, kids! Don't do drugs!)
This is one of those books that I've had for a long time, so long in fact, I've forgotten where it came from. It wasn't til I decided to read it last week that I noticed it's signed by the author. Awesome! What's even better is the inscription . . .
Lois
For a great sister-in-law -------
Mary Karr
Yeah, such a great sister-in-law that the book you gave her somehow ended up on my shelf.
Let's just hope that didn't happen until after you divorced Lois's brother, eh, Mary?
*Underneath the Moon by Margaret A. Roche
March 26, 2020
Mary Karr is a poet and would prefer to be known as such. As laudable as that aspiration may be, in a financial sense it doesn't count for much. Luckily for Ms. Karr, popular culture has embraced her foray into memoir and this is the field in which her oats are most profitably sewn. She has written three, all of which have soared to the top of literary lists. Cherry is the work that spans her adolescence as a wild child dreaming big city dreams in small-town Texas - and the ton of trouble such rebels get in as they search so frantically for a way out.
This is an evocative account of youth that shies away from very little. Here you'll find those shifting sands of teenage academia. There, the dawning recognition of a parent's sad humanity. Do you remember the way boredom used to bleed into desperation? The constant negotiation of sexuality - whether you did anything about it or not? And all the danger in choices that didn't seem dangerous at all at the time. Something in Mary Karr's recollection is going to hunt down your recollections of it too, and that is her gift; the ability to unearth this treacherous commonality. We will unite, and it just might hurt.
On the kids with whom she finally found a form of kinship:
What warms your counterculture heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at - that just doesn't bubble up here. Who cares if these surfers don't seem to read like you do? Most don't seem to read at all that you notice. Still, nobody squawks about lending you a flashlight if yours goes dead in the night, and on more than one occasion, guys you barely know have without question driven you thirty miles to buy a pen or extra paper, never asking what you're scribbling or to whom, with no mockery inherent in the not-asking either.
Bet'cha found a little poetry in that. Because, really, where do you imagine it all goes?
This is an evocative account of youth that shies away from very little. Here you'll find those shifting sands of teenage academia. There, the dawning recognition of a parent's sad humanity. Do you remember the way boredom used to bleed into desperation? The constant negotiation of sexuality - whether you did anything about it or not? And all the danger in choices that didn't seem dangerous at all at the time. Something in Mary Karr's recollection is going to hunt down your recollections of it too, and that is her gift; the ability to unearth this treacherous commonality. We will unite, and it just might hurt.
On the kids with whom she finally found a form of kinship:
What warms your counterculture heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at - that just doesn't bubble up here. Who cares if these surfers don't seem to read like you do? Most don't seem to read at all that you notice. Still, nobody squawks about lending you a flashlight if yours goes dead in the night, and on more than one occasion, guys you barely know have without question driven you thirty miles to buy a pen or extra paper, never asking what you're scribbling or to whom, with no mockery inherent in the not-asking either.
Bet'cha found a little poetry in that. Because, really, where do you imagine it all goes?
March 4, 2022
Cherry was the sequel to the memoir by Mary Karr, her ground-breaking Liar's Poker about her hardscrabble childhood in Texas. Cherry is a coming-of-age memoir taking place in Leechfield, Texas as we witness all of the turbulence of adolescence as only the prose of Mary Karr can do it justice with her edgy and beautiful prose as she violently crashes up against all forms of authority, whether it be the school principal, or all of the law enforcement officers throughout Texas. A few of my favorite passages:
"That my being smarter than everybody would have fallen in dispute is a shock that shuts off my tears. I feel deep conviction that I am, in fact, smarter than everybody--an opinion both my parents have hammered into me my whole life."
"And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody--anybody--who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don't earn it. It's given."
March 23, 2009
Mary Karr is a literary god. She is just brilliant. Her prose is like poetry but without the self-consciousness that usually accompanies prose stylists who write like poets and vice versa. She also manages to capture the flavor of living in east Texas - the turns of phrase, the slang - without seeming forced or pretentious. Just the writing alone is worth the price of the book, because the writing makes what has by now become a cliche in memoir writing - recounting a troubled, drug-addled adolescence, thanks James Frey, you hack - and makes it sing. Which is all I really ask for these days. I don't need plots filled with novelty and originality. I just want stories that are honest and true and written in gorgeous language. Karr gives that to her reader, and so much more.
This is the second memoir I've read of Karr's. Her first, The Liar's Club, is equally classic. She teased a bit to some years she spent in California, and I also know from reading a New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace that she has gone through rehab. So I am hoping that she will turn out at least two or three more beautiful memoirs, and I look forward to reading them over and over again.
This is the second memoir I've read of Karr's. Her first, The Liar's Club, is equally classic. She teased a bit to some years she spent in California, and I also know from reading a New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace that she has gone through rehab. So I am hoping that she will turn out at least two or three more beautiful memoirs, and I look forward to reading them over and over again.
November 24, 2008
Cherry is the biographical story of a teenager coming into her own. I was told it was a great book by some chick on LJ and I was all geared up for a Great Book. It didn't hit the mark for me. It was good - but I just didn't feel like the story hit that bone of truth for me like it seems to have with other people. Maybe I was at that point in my life where you push away your youth and reading about someone struggling in a small town just hit too close to home? I don't know. I thought the writing was good but it was a book I had to work to read rather than anxiously waiting to read more.
It's an anorexic The Bell Jar in my mind.
It's an anorexic The Bell Jar in my mind.
September 19, 2017
"The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts."
MaryKarr on audio is perfection. She's smart and gritty – a combination I'm drawn to. She has quickly become one of my favorite authors. At this point, I'd be awed by her grocery list.
MaryKarr on audio is perfection. She's smart and gritty – a combination I'm drawn to. She has quickly become one of my favorite authors. At this point, I'd be awed by her grocery list.
January 19, 2016
The prologue of this chapter of Mary Karr's life starts out with an exciting dramatic departure from home on a road trip with surfer boys. If the entire memoir had only been that story, or her life after that story, I think it would have been far stronger. Having read The Liars' Club last year, I had the impression this was about the next phase of her life. And it is, sometimes. But a lot of it rehashes the same territory, maybe from a slightly different angle, or telling a different story, but it doesn't move forward in the way I expected.
An example of the force of the prologue illuminates the relationship stage Karr has reached with her father.
On the other hand, nobody can put you in a specific place the way Karr can put you in blue collar East Texas. Her writing of imagined dialogue is pretty great, and who could forget the conversation between her Dad and preteen Mary about not wanting a bra, but wanting "titties."
The other element I struggle to relate to is that this is more of a coming of age novel about a young girl and her substances, more than her friendships, relationships, or family. I just can't relate! And I think in memoir for it to be meaningful to me, I need something to connect with in that person's story. There are moments that approach it, for sure, it just doesn't do it as well as The Liar's Club.
"Kids in distressed families are great repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told."
An example of the force of the prologue illuminates the relationship stage Karr has reached with her father.
"You have been dismissed again.And also with her mother:
In truth, you dismissed him long before, but you won't be able to face that for years. You shrugged off his hand when he tried to hug you. When he nagged you about breakfast, you waved him away. You can't admit to yourself that you first turned your back to him. So you invert the rejection - this distance, your scorn. They're now his attitudes aimed at you. In reality, he's an old man in his sixties whose raggedy-looking daughter refuses his every word and whose flight from him seems - no, is - unimaginable."
"Your mother still somehow cannot fathom your leaving her in this madhouse, though she groomed you for it and urged you to it."The strength of Mary Karr is the writing but in Cherry I found some devices overused, to the extent where they felt like devices and not natural shifts, particularly the switches to second person and the phrase "like so many X." I will always have a kneejerk reaction to an unnecessary or forced metaphor, and the "like so many X" tactic was always followed by one of them.
On the other hand, nobody can put you in a specific place the way Karr can put you in blue collar East Texas. Her writing of imagined dialogue is pretty great, and who could forget the conversation between her Dad and preteen Mary about not wanting a bra, but wanting "titties."
The other element I struggle to relate to is that this is more of a coming of age novel about a young girl and her substances, more than her friendships, relationships, or family. I just can't relate! And I think in memoir for it to be meaningful to me, I need something to connect with in that person's story. There are moments that approach it, for sure, it just doesn't do it as well as The Liar's Club.
"Kids in distressed families are great repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told."
May 24, 2023
Sabes que es una biografía sobre la infancia, la adolescencia, el camino hacia las puertas de la adultez, pero quieres quedarte con Mary Karr narrándote hasta que te cuente qué vivió ayer mismo. Porque no es solamente el qué narra, sino cómo. Qué bien escribe. Quiero más.
April 4, 2022
Mary Karr's, "Cherry," is a real "trip," and I don't mean that in the literal sense, like a trip to France. In short, it is the best articulation of what it feels like to be on an LSD trip, hallucinating for three days straight, that I have ever read.
"Cherry, is the the sequel to Ms. Karr's memoir, "The Liars' Club," and it is just as breathtaking, honest, and exceptionally written as the "The Liars' Club." It concentrates on Ms. Karr's teenage years living in east Texas, the sexual coming of age of the author and her friends, the use of drugs and booze, the terror of high school and the bullying that goes along with it, and experiences with the police and being locked up.
Ms. Karr's ability to write what she calls a memoir, like a novel, is a gift that few authors have been able to achieve. The honesty in her writing is the type of honesty most writers only achieve in their 'Letters," or in today's world with emails.
Ms. Karr is a major talent, and I once again, want to thank Lorna for introducing this fabulous writer to me.
"Cherry, is the the sequel to Ms. Karr's memoir, "The Liars' Club," and it is just as breathtaking, honest, and exceptionally written as the "The Liars' Club." It concentrates on Ms. Karr's teenage years living in east Texas, the sexual coming of age of the author and her friends, the use of drugs and booze, the terror of high school and the bullying that goes along with it, and experiences with the police and being locked up.
Ms. Karr's ability to write what she calls a memoir, like a novel, is a gift that few authors have been able to achieve. The honesty in her writing is the type of honesty most writers only achieve in their 'Letters," or in today's world with emails.
Ms. Karr is a major talent, and I once again, want to thank Lorna for introducing this fabulous writer to me.
July 6, 2018
All Grown Up
This is not the first person journal of a teenager, but a memoir written by a mature adult in the second person (which sometimes sounds like the older self is addressing and advising the younger self).
The adult language often has an abstraction beyond what you’d expect of the adolescent, even if it’s quite evocative in a literary manner:
Although there is much about Karr's Texan adolescence (pimples and “titties”, bras and boys, back seats and bell bottoms, football drills and dandelions, lava lamps and LSD, popcorn and petting, blue balls and hickies, swimming and sleepovers, mutations and mutilations, love spells and lost causes), there is still the impression of an adult telling a retrospective story (“half poetry and half autobiography”; in contrast to Pynchon’s “V”, “it’s a world described rather than a world created”).
The novel isn’t quite the “vivid language experience” of “The Liars’ Club”, even if it is a detailed and nuanced recollection of actual people and events, “some capsule of wonder that will sustain you both in years to come”. Nevertheless, in the second volume of Karr’s project, we see a young girl grow into “a real woman, a hardworking woman with a pure soul. Not just a perfumed woman on the outside.”
The Maternal Effect
Maybe we see Karr become her mother (her father is largely absent from this volume). She is, at the time of writing, both an adult and the parent of a (male) teenager. Perhaps, that’s why this reader found the narrator’s mother more fascinating than the narrator herself (her advice to Mary: “You just have to be smarter than the ones who are prettier, and prettier than the ones who are smarter...”). Karr realises much later, “only your Mother could make you a minor character in [your own memoir.]”
I suspect that this retrospective memoir (is that a tautology?) might be more appealing to adult women and parents of daughters (rather than young girls themselves, unless they identify with their mothers). Still, as Karr writes, “who listens [to these stories] is almost beside the point, so long as the watching eyes remain lit, and the head tilts at the angle indicating attention and care.”
Image copyright: Ken Brown
SOUNDTRACK:
Rugrats Theme Song - “All Grown Up”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjWf0...
ZZ Top - “La Grange”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqz0w...
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - “Foxey Lady” (Live at Miami Pop 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVjc...
Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - “Son of Suzy Creamcheese”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eNaA...
This is not the first person journal of a teenager, but a memoir written by a mature adult in the second person (which sometimes sounds like the older self is addressing and advising the younger self).
The adult language often has an abstraction beyond what you’d expect of the adolescent, even if it’s quite evocative in a literary manner:
“He runs his tongue along your lower lip like a question, and you return the inquiry.” (167)
“You’re drunk on being both source and recipient of [his] desire. After the vast years of solitude, his aqua eyes somehow carve you into the air. Incarnate you. Your fleshly image of yourself is deriving from what he sees.” (168)
“The lustrous warmth of him along your body is like taking a long drink of something you’ve wanted all your life.” (182)
Although there is much about Karr's Texan adolescence (pimples and “titties”, bras and boys, back seats and bell bottoms, football drills and dandelions, lava lamps and LSD, popcorn and petting, blue balls and hickies, swimming and sleepovers, mutations and mutilations, love spells and lost causes), there is still the impression of an adult telling a retrospective story (“half poetry and half autobiography”; in contrast to Pynchon’s “V”, “it’s a world described rather than a world created”).
The novel isn’t quite the “vivid language experience” of “The Liars’ Club”, even if it is a detailed and nuanced recollection of actual people and events, “some capsule of wonder that will sustain you both in years to come”. Nevertheless, in the second volume of Karr’s project, we see a young girl grow into “a real woman, a hardworking woman with a pure soul. Not just a perfumed woman on the outside.”
The Maternal Effect
Maybe we see Karr become her mother (her father is largely absent from this volume). She is, at the time of writing, both an adult and the parent of a (male) teenager. Perhaps, that’s why this reader found the narrator’s mother more fascinating than the narrator herself (her advice to Mary: “You just have to be smarter than the ones who are prettier, and prettier than the ones who are smarter...”). Karr realises much later, “only your Mother could make you a minor character in [your own memoir.]”
I suspect that this retrospective memoir (is that a tautology?) might be more appealing to adult women and parents of daughters (rather than young girls themselves, unless they identify with their mothers). Still, as Karr writes, “who listens [to these stories] is almost beside the point, so long as the watching eyes remain lit, and the head tilts at the angle indicating attention and care.”
Image copyright: Ken Brown
SOUNDTRACK:
Rugrats Theme Song - “All Grown Up”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjWf0...
ZZ Top - “La Grange”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqz0w...
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - “Foxey Lady” (Live at Miami Pop 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVjc...
Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - “Son of Suzy Creamcheese”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eNaA...
July 13, 2017
This book was structured really weird. There was no story to it, no shape, no beginning, climax or end. It was a bunch of Karr's memories of her childhood/teenager years. So maybe my low rating is because I don't enjoy this type of style of book, not that Karr is a bad author. Her writing wasn't bad, there were moments I laughed and moments that were very poetic which I liked. But because of the lack of destiny or meaning, I was not engaged.
March 4, 2024
I've only read excerpts of this. Whatever's appeared in The New Yorker... I give it the same rating as "The Liar's Club" though the "remembering" might have more validity since this book focuses on Karr's life at a later stage of childhood/teenager-hood.
Since I only read a part of this I'll now read the whole thing. While I don't officially approve of the whole memoir "thing," particularly when it takes the form of novelization of memory and reality, Mary Karr is a good writer and it's pretty interesting so far. But ... I'm just sayin' ...
- The cover photo looks like Natalie Wood
- "Intuitively you know that years of wandering lie ahead for you." See, now this is what I'm talking about. Does the adult Ms. Karr actually remember her teen-aged self feeling that specific thing at the time, or is it merely an after-the-fact observation? Seems kind of adult to me.
Setting aside my reservations, I'm enjoying the tale of Pokey's adolescence in her still bumpy family of origin. Mom and Dad both boozers and none too helpful as parents. Not without their attractions and assets, however. I would not, however, recommend an alcohol-surrounded childhood to anyone.
- Pokey and Lecia remind of the sisters in"Housekeeping."
- Yikes, I remember those school pictures. Way, way back ...
- I remember my late younger sister running around w/o a shirt on at age 8-9 in Boulder and being made fun of by neighborhood boys.
One of the major themes in "The Liar's Club" was the often catastrophically bad parenting(abuse, neglect, abandonment - particularly the latter two) the girls were subjected to. They are/will be survivors. That's both a good and a bad thing. In this book they are older and somewhat more on their own and self-sufficient. The parents, bad as they are, are more in the background.
- First kiss description = major overkill
- Now ... Mary/Pokey describes a conversation she had on her way home from school with her object of desire as he took a break from Jr. High football practice(I remember those). He asks her to come over after supper to help him write an essay. She describes being there while a Dallas Cowboys game is on the television. NO SIRREE BOB! Not on a weekday/school evening, and this was before Monday Night Football, which began in 1970. The scene is set in the context of 7th grade for Karr, so she would have been 12-13. She was born in 1955. Too early for MNFB. To make matters worse, John's mother talks about the possibility of the game going into overtime. Again ... NO WAY JOSE' - no overtime for regular season games back then. Playoffs would have been in December - no Jr. High football then. Now ... I'm not saying that the individuals parts of this scene didn't take place, but the whole thing, as it is written is FICTION. Then, again there's the issue of the dialogue. Did the adolescent Mary take a tape recorder around with her to record dialogue for later use in yet-to-be-written memoirs???? Methinks NAY!
- Another boo-boo as the lyrics of Janis Joplin's "Turtle Blues" are incorrectly referenced ... s. b. "its horny shell" not "my horny shell" ...
- Daddy takes off on a fishing trip but leaves his pickup behind?
Looks like we're getting revved up for sex and drugs and rock and roll for the last part of the book. Should be interesting - or boring ...
The rock-and-roll has begun, but so far Mary isn't doing the sex and drug. Coming soon, I'm sure.
- Jerry Lee Lewis was a star before, not after his appearances at the local R&R venue. The pre-fame ZZ Top stuff was pretty cool, though.
As predicted the sex and drugs are beginning to hold sway for Mary even as she's uncovered a special friend with even more life challenges than she has. One of Mary's; having been molested twice(I think) during her chaotic single-digit childhood(see "The Liar's Club"). Sad ...
- We get multiple doses of Mary's warm response to making out. For me one of these prolonged passages is enough. MK treats this as some kind of mystical experience. Been there, done that and yes, it does feel good. Not f--king orgasm good, but emotional good. If you're emotionally needy(i.e. LONELY) it can hit hard.
- Like me, Mary got almost NO useful help from the older people in her family. Mom and Dad are particularly useless. Her older sister helps a little. Sounds familiar ...
Almost done after last night. During last night's reading one is reminded why cops were called "pigs" BITD. But then, much of American repressive and repressed whitey-white culture was pretty piggish. We are making progressive-progress, but we obviously have a long way to go. Not just in the USA, but in the whole wide world.
- I remember the record of the farting contest("The Champ shit!")! My roommate in 70-71 had one. Lord Wind-is-near(or Windesmere) vs Paul Boomer. Not all that funny ...
- Why does she write Boone's Farm as Boonsfarm?
Finished last night as lonely Mary becomes more comfortable(?) with coping via a steady input of drugs and sex. And she hasn't even begun her senior year in high school yet. This despite her description of what I assume is a true telling of one harrowing night out there in crazy-land high on acid. I can identify, though I never took acid. Sad ... The author seems to have acquired a writing-friendly kind of detachment which allows her to look back without too much sadness. It's called self-protection and serves a couple of needs for Ms. Karr(assuming I'm right). I also assume that the Jesus-thing fits in there too. No mention of twelve-step recovery(Al-Anon, AA, Narc-Anon), though I'll bet she's spent plenty of time on therapist's couches. In summation ... I like MK's writing style, but I don't love it. It's a bit airy-fairy-girly-ironic for me, but still, I'm reasonably gratified to have read this and will likely read the last one ... sometime ... "Lit"(?).
- The rape scene in "Deliverance"(the movie anyway) is mis-described.
- Mary's "trip" at the end reminds of H. S. Thompson's(Raul's) acid trip in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - the movie. Funny-horrible ...
- 3.25* rounds down to 3*.
Since I only read a part of this I'll now read the whole thing. While I don't officially approve of the whole memoir "thing," particularly when it takes the form of novelization of memory and reality, Mary Karr is a good writer and it's pretty interesting so far. But ... I'm just sayin' ...
- The cover photo looks like Natalie Wood
- "Intuitively you know that years of wandering lie ahead for you." See, now this is what I'm talking about. Does the adult Ms. Karr actually remember her teen-aged self feeling that specific thing at the time, or is it merely an after-the-fact observation? Seems kind of adult to me.
Setting aside my reservations, I'm enjoying the tale of Pokey's adolescence in her still bumpy family of origin. Mom and Dad both boozers and none too helpful as parents. Not without their attractions and assets, however. I would not, however, recommend an alcohol-surrounded childhood to anyone.
- Pokey and Lecia remind of the sisters in"Housekeeping."
- Yikes, I remember those school pictures. Way, way back ...
- I remember my late younger sister running around w/o a shirt on at age 8-9 in Boulder and being made fun of by neighborhood boys.
One of the major themes in "The Liar's Club" was the often catastrophically bad parenting(abuse, neglect, abandonment - particularly the latter two) the girls were subjected to. They are/will be survivors. That's both a good and a bad thing. In this book they are older and somewhat more on their own and self-sufficient. The parents, bad as they are, are more in the background.
- First kiss description = major overkill
- Now ... Mary/Pokey describes a conversation she had on her way home from school with her object of desire as he took a break from Jr. High football practice(I remember those). He asks her to come over after supper to help him write an essay. She describes being there while a Dallas Cowboys game is on the television. NO SIRREE BOB! Not on a weekday/school evening, and this was before Monday Night Football, which began in 1970. The scene is set in the context of 7th grade for Karr, so she would have been 12-13. She was born in 1955. Too early for MNFB. To make matters worse, John's mother talks about the possibility of the game going into overtime. Again ... NO WAY JOSE' - no overtime for regular season games back then. Playoffs would have been in December - no Jr. High football then. Now ... I'm not saying that the individuals parts of this scene didn't take place, but the whole thing, as it is written is FICTION. Then, again there's the issue of the dialogue. Did the adolescent Mary take a tape recorder around with her to record dialogue for later use in yet-to-be-written memoirs???? Methinks NAY!
- Another boo-boo as the lyrics of Janis Joplin's "Turtle Blues" are incorrectly referenced ... s. b. "its horny shell" not "my horny shell" ...
- Daddy takes off on a fishing trip but leaves his pickup behind?
Looks like we're getting revved up for sex and drugs and rock and roll for the last part of the book. Should be interesting - or boring ...
The rock-and-roll has begun, but so far Mary isn't doing the sex and drug. Coming soon, I'm sure.
- Jerry Lee Lewis was a star before, not after his appearances at the local R&R venue. The pre-fame ZZ Top stuff was pretty cool, though.
As predicted the sex and drugs are beginning to hold sway for Mary even as she's uncovered a special friend with even more life challenges than she has. One of Mary's; having been molested twice(I think) during her chaotic single-digit childhood(see "The Liar's Club"). Sad ...
- We get multiple doses of Mary's warm response to making out. For me one of these prolonged passages is enough. MK treats this as some kind of mystical experience. Been there, done that and yes, it does feel good. Not f--king orgasm good, but emotional good. If you're emotionally needy(i.e. LONELY) it can hit hard.
- Like me, Mary got almost NO useful help from the older people in her family. Mom and Dad are particularly useless. Her older sister helps a little. Sounds familiar ...
Almost done after last night. During last night's reading one is reminded why cops were called "pigs" BITD. But then, much of American repressive and repressed whitey-white culture was pretty piggish. We are making progressive-progress, but we obviously have a long way to go. Not just in the USA, but in the whole wide world.
- I remember the record of the farting contest("The Champ shit!")! My roommate in 70-71 had one. Lord Wind-is-near(or Windesmere) vs Paul Boomer. Not all that funny ...
- Why does she write Boone's Farm as Boonsfarm?
Finished last night as lonely Mary becomes more comfortable(?) with coping via a steady input of drugs and sex. And she hasn't even begun her senior year in high school yet. This despite her description of what I assume is a true telling of one harrowing night out there in crazy-land high on acid. I can identify, though I never took acid. Sad ... The author seems to have acquired a writing-friendly kind of detachment which allows her to look back without too much sadness. It's called self-protection and serves a couple of needs for Ms. Karr(assuming I'm right). I also assume that the Jesus-thing fits in there too. No mention of twelve-step recovery(Al-Anon, AA, Narc-Anon), though I'll bet she's spent plenty of time on therapist's couches. In summation ... I like MK's writing style, but I don't love it. It's a bit airy-fairy-girly-ironic for me, but still, I'm reasonably gratified to have read this and will likely read the last one ... sometime ... "Lit"(?).
- The rape scene in "Deliverance"(the movie anyway) is mis-described.
- Mary's "trip" at the end reminds of H. S. Thompson's(Raul's) acid trip in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - the movie. Funny-horrible ...
- 3.25* rounds down to 3*.
February 28, 2013
I'm writing my own stories about growing up in Texas; so I naturally had to read LIAR'S CLUB and CHERRY. I'm glad I did, although my tortured journey toward adulthood began ten years earlier than Mary's and involved nine years in an orphanage. Not comparing; just giving my angle of orientation. To me anyone with parents is spoiled, but then I didn't have drugs to contend with. Still, we shared that "outsider" view and the search for self and struggle to escape the boundaries of our pre-adolescent Texas culture.
For a nimble mind there is much to like here: frankness, delightful poetic phrasing and pulse, the drifting scope and focus of the author's camera, bright and intimate views from a thoroughly charming girl I'd like to have known when I was younger. CHERRY races along until the last two psychedelic chapters, which were tricky but instructive for this reader who's never done LSD or anything stronger than pot, leaving me with an unchanged disinterest in such chemical escapades. Still, those two herky-jerky chapters gave me a sense of what "tripping" was like and reminded me of Ken Kesey.
Self-deprecating cultural insights pop up like Whac-a-moles, such as when Mary joins an older black laundry worker on her break. "Her being black so absolutely trumps most other forms of suffering that you feel proud to be treated as an ally. ...You bend over Drusilla's accordion wallet, straining to disguise the knee-jerk piety that comes at such moments from being white, which affords so much unspoken social ease. Surely you'll never be indentured to some packet of grand-babies staring out of yellowed plastic windows. Surely the world will land you in some more elegant circumstance, one that pays you extravagantly for your opinions and brilliant insights into the human condition."
And later, during a drug fest at the beach: "What warms your countercultural heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at--that just doesn't bubble up here."
Another juicy quote: "You know that on this broad planet sympathetic others exist, at least a few beings somewhere who might feel alien as you. Books prove it--characters like old Holden Caulfield... . The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion."
And another: "I stood there while his heavy-lashed eyes sealed themselves against me, and the fine tendons of his sockless feet resumed their post crossed in his loafers out the window."
CHERRY is a more than worthy read for anyone drawn to the journey from puberty to adulthood, especially from a girl's perspective and more especially within the context of a small Texas town. (McMurtry, move over.) I found the issues important, the settings realistic and engaging, the characters and dialogue as well, especially Mary's parents, friends and boyfriends and that engaging judge who was her mother's admirer and rescued Mary from jail.
Thanks Mary.
For a nimble mind there is much to like here: frankness, delightful poetic phrasing and pulse, the drifting scope and focus of the author's camera, bright and intimate views from a thoroughly charming girl I'd like to have known when I was younger. CHERRY races along until the last two psychedelic chapters, which were tricky but instructive for this reader who's never done LSD or anything stronger than pot, leaving me with an unchanged disinterest in such chemical escapades. Still, those two herky-jerky chapters gave me a sense of what "tripping" was like and reminded me of Ken Kesey.
Self-deprecating cultural insights pop up like Whac-a-moles, such as when Mary joins an older black laundry worker on her break. "Her being black so absolutely trumps most other forms of suffering that you feel proud to be treated as an ally. ...You bend over Drusilla's accordion wallet, straining to disguise the knee-jerk piety that comes at such moments from being white, which affords so much unspoken social ease. Surely you'll never be indentured to some packet of grand-babies staring out of yellowed plastic windows. Surely the world will land you in some more elegant circumstance, one that pays you extravagantly for your opinions and brilliant insights into the human condition."
And later, during a drug fest at the beach: "What warms your countercultural heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at--that just doesn't bubble up here."
Another juicy quote: "You know that on this broad planet sympathetic others exist, at least a few beings somewhere who might feel alien as you. Books prove it--characters like old Holden Caulfield... . The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion."
And another: "I stood there while his heavy-lashed eyes sealed themselves against me, and the fine tendons of his sockless feet resumed their post crossed in his loafers out the window."
CHERRY is a more than worthy read for anyone drawn to the journey from puberty to adulthood, especially from a girl's perspective and more especially within the context of a small Texas town. (McMurtry, move over.) I found the issues important, the settings realistic and engaging, the characters and dialogue as well, especially Mary's parents, friends and boyfriends and that engaging judge who was her mother's admirer and rescued Mary from jail.
Thanks Mary.
January 21, 2009
I had high hopes for this book because Mary Karr explains that she wrote it to fill a void for the female coming-of-age novel. She claims that the world of female teenage years needed to be explored - I agree, so I was really looking forward to what she had to say.
The reality of this memoir is that it is hardly a "typical" growing up, yet she failed to deeply explore the aspects of her youth that may have been more universal. I could only identify with snippets of the story, and just when I was able to buy-in, she would flake off into euphemisms and other figurative language. For example, she repeatedly used the term "solar plexus" (i.e. a burning in my solar plexus) and I'm still unsure if that was intended to be her explanation of an orgasm. Why couldn't she say "in the pit of my stomach"? What 15-year-old would use the term "solar plexus" to describe his/her feelings?
I was also disturbed by the point-of-view Karr chose. Instead of always using first person or third, she sometimes shifts to the awkward 2nd person ("you") point-of-view, ostensibly to help make the story seem more personal to the reader. The problem lies in the fact that I couldn't relate to her experiences, so I was never in her shoes. I simply found it disorienting and annoying.
All-in-all, I wasn't terribly impressed. Of course, Karr is a talented writer, but she presented not the universal story of what girls go through as they become women, but 300 pages of unapologetic misbehavior, including significant sections of colorful descriptions of various drug "trips". At the end I was hoping for some kind of hindsight or "I learned..." but was left wanting.
The reality of this memoir is that it is hardly a "typical" growing up, yet she failed to deeply explore the aspects of her youth that may have been more universal. I could only identify with snippets of the story, and just when I was able to buy-in, she would flake off into euphemisms and other figurative language. For example, she repeatedly used the term "solar plexus" (i.e. a burning in my solar plexus) and I'm still unsure if that was intended to be her explanation of an orgasm. Why couldn't she say "in the pit of my stomach"? What 15-year-old would use the term "solar plexus" to describe his/her feelings?
I was also disturbed by the point-of-view Karr chose. Instead of always using first person or third, she sometimes shifts to the awkward 2nd person ("you") point-of-view, ostensibly to help make the story seem more personal to the reader. The problem lies in the fact that I couldn't relate to her experiences, so I was never in her shoes. I simply found it disorienting and annoying.
All-in-all, I wasn't terribly impressed. Of course, Karr is a talented writer, but she presented not the universal story of what girls go through as they become women, but 300 pages of unapologetic misbehavior, including significant sections of colorful descriptions of various drug "trips". At the end I was hoping for some kind of hindsight or "I learned..." but was left wanting.
Read
September 24, 2023the use of second person in this makes me want to get on jstor & start writing an academic essay… mla format what then?
September 11, 2021
Algo me ha fallado en este libro. No se si ha sido al leerlo en tercer lugar, el modo en el que está estructurado y narrado. O cómo presenta la autora a su yo adolescente.
Pero esta vez, no ha sido como los otros y sinceramente, lo he terminado a duras penas (y porque tenia mas tiempo y he tardado poco) reconociendo, eso sí el retrato de un momento y una sociedad.
Pero esta vez, no ha sido como los otros y sinceramente, lo he terminado a duras penas (y porque tenia mas tiempo y he tardado poco) reconociendo, eso sí el retrato de un momento y una sociedad.
April 3, 2021
Entre 3,5 y 4*.
February 13, 2012
I didn't think this volume was as good as Liar's Club or Lit. I do like Karr's style and prose. There is a lot of Texas swagger in her. I found her high school descent into drugs rather harrowing. The God she refused to believe in certainly covered her with grace. Driving while tripping on acid! She could have ended up like so many of her friends. What I like about memoirs is seeing how other people come to make sence of their experiences and somehow survive, make it to adulthood (psychically). God spoke to me one time at a particular low point when I felt I was just never going to be OK. Like a cup that is glued back together but is still obviously broken. While lamenting this to the Lord, I heard as clear a bell..."that isn't what I am doing in your life. I'm taking the broken pieces and making a mosaic. Something made of broken parts but not itself broken and a thing of beauty." I've never forgotten that.
Another reviewer listed one of the same quotes I liked about first loves...
"First loves take us like that....Which denies their truth, I think, for my inner life took full shape around such a love. I learned to imagine around his face. Before such enchantment takes us, there are only the faces of parents, other kin. Those are doled out to us; they are us in some portion. These first beloveds are other. And we invent ourselves by choosing them."
High School..."But first and foremost you have to restrain youself from displaying the reckless ardor of the unloved toward those strongly disinclined to love you back. These standards seem virtually ingrained into the exalted few, but demand conscious effort and attention from your ilk.
Basically you are hoping to manufacture a whole new bearing or being, some method of maneuvering along the hallways that will result in less vigorous psycho-social BUTT-WHIPPINGS (Texas girl!) than those endured in junior high"
Miracles, when she was getting cosy with the idea of suicide...
"When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anthing at all?
All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and Mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don't know. Further north, I'd guess.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says Pete, I think she's up. He hollers in , You ready for breakfast, Pokey. then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He's holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through the folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they'd fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.
Damned if I didn't get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.....And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yoruself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody- who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for surviavl that the coming years are about to demand. You don't earn it. It's given."
Another reviewer listed one of the same quotes I liked about first loves...
"First loves take us like that....Which denies their truth, I think, for my inner life took full shape around such a love. I learned to imagine around his face. Before such enchantment takes us, there are only the faces of parents, other kin. Those are doled out to us; they are us in some portion. These first beloveds are other. And we invent ourselves by choosing them."
High School..."But first and foremost you have to restrain youself from displaying the reckless ardor of the unloved toward those strongly disinclined to love you back. These standards seem virtually ingrained into the exalted few, but demand conscious effort and attention from your ilk.
Basically you are hoping to manufacture a whole new bearing or being, some method of maneuvering along the hallways that will result in less vigorous psycho-social BUTT-WHIPPINGS (Texas girl!) than those endured in junior high"
Miracles, when she was getting cosy with the idea of suicide...
"When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anthing at all?
All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and Mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don't know. Further north, I'd guess.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says Pete, I think she's up. He hollers in , You ready for breakfast, Pokey. then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He's holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through the folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they'd fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.
Damned if I didn't get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.....And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yoruself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody- who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for surviavl that the coming years are about to demand. You don't earn it. It's given."
August 27, 2020
The second memoir by the American poet.
Memoir Review: Cherry followed closely after Mary Karr's third book of poetry, Viper Rum (1998), and five years after her wildly successful and revolutionary first memoir, The Liars' Club (1995). That book mostly addressed certain moments in her childhood and her relationship with her unconventional parents. At times it ventured into freak show territory that few of us have experienced. Now in Cherry Karr examines those awkward years and moments of girl into woman before adulthood in 1960s and '70s America. There is more here that will resonate with more people. Despite very different backgrounds, we're all people reacting to the world around us and at some point we were all teenagers doing the best we could. Somehow we lived through those years, though not all of us. Although The Liars' Club (this a sort of sequel) may be the better book, here Karr was trying new techniques, new approaches, mixing things up. This story of female adolescence and young love gave her more room to cut loose. The second half of the book presents the dark and troubled side of drug use, which may have enabled her to drift through her East Texas ennui, but didn't do much good for a lot of her friends. Sowing wild oats can be tricky. Cherry lets Karr as an adult look back on her time as a child, with greater wisdom, knowledge, and rue. As a child she was prescient, having planned "to write ½ poetry and ½ autobiography." She (eventually) succeeded in doing both, and as a poet Karr captures emotion well, making it easy to relate to her youthful explorations of the world and the social structures built around her. What Bonjour Tristesse presented as fiction, Cherry gives us as fact. A friend notes the distinction between "a world created rather than a world described," and Karr's poetry is heavily autobiographical. At one point she cites the poet Bill Knott, one of my own favorites. Mary Karr is the exception to my irrational aversion to memoir, perhaps because as a poet become memoirist she manages to blur the lines between the two. [4★]
Memoir Review: Cherry followed closely after Mary Karr's third book of poetry, Viper Rum (1998), and five years after her wildly successful and revolutionary first memoir, The Liars' Club (1995). That book mostly addressed certain moments in her childhood and her relationship with her unconventional parents. At times it ventured into freak show territory that few of us have experienced. Now in Cherry Karr examines those awkward years and moments of girl into woman before adulthood in 1960s and '70s America. There is more here that will resonate with more people. Despite very different backgrounds, we're all people reacting to the world around us and at some point we were all teenagers doing the best we could. Somehow we lived through those years, though not all of us. Although The Liars' Club (this a sort of sequel) may be the better book, here Karr was trying new techniques, new approaches, mixing things up. This story of female adolescence and young love gave her more room to cut loose. The second half of the book presents the dark and troubled side of drug use, which may have enabled her to drift through her East Texas ennui, but didn't do much good for a lot of her friends. Sowing wild oats can be tricky. Cherry lets Karr as an adult look back on her time as a child, with greater wisdom, knowledge, and rue. As a child she was prescient, having planned "to write ½ poetry and ½ autobiography." She (eventually) succeeded in doing both, and as a poet Karr captures emotion well, making it easy to relate to her youthful explorations of the world and the social structures built around her. What Bonjour Tristesse presented as fiction, Cherry gives us as fact. A friend notes the distinction between "a world created rather than a world described," and Karr's poetry is heavily autobiographical. At one point she cites the poet Bill Knott, one of my own favorites. Mary Karr is the exception to my irrational aversion to memoir, perhaps because as a poet become memoirist she manages to blur the lines between the two. [4★]
April 6, 2008
Take THAT Nabakov!
So this is a follow up to the Liars Club, her memoir of growing up with a dysfunctional family in Texas. This time around, she focuses on her coming of age years with a fantastic precision and recollection.
What I most admired about this book is the way you can see how a teenage girl can be bad and good, how she can be smart and yet naive, wild and yet sheltered all at the same time. Her stories about how her sexual emotions were budding was so very true to life- while she was having new feelings and registering new sensations in her body, she did not immediately conclude that intercourse was inevitable. In her mind, she envisioned more benign hugging and hand holding and kissing- ultimately more intimacy and connection that girls think of as love.
What is so fascinating is that while she knew all that she needed and more than she wanted from her mother, she still didn't put that together with what she was desiring. She even mentions how Lolita was so wrong when she read it because it was so polar opposite to her experiences. And how it was clearly a man's forcing boy thoughts into a young girl's mind and his twisted interpretation. While she may have done things that could be concluded as being flirty, young girls many times do not understand how their seemingly innocent actions can be wildly interpreted.
I related very much to this book- while I was a much better behaved girl in middle and high school when it came to authority, and my home live was more balanced (though dysfunctional in ways, I did have my drug and drinking period at the same time frame that she did and related a lot to the feelings of boredom and anxiety that wanting more gives a teenager. And I clearly remember being head over heels for my first boyfriend, as she was, and just never thinking that we needed to move any further than making out for hours. And, being devastated in how wrong I was when he broke up with me.
I can't wait to pass this one on...
So this is a follow up to the Liars Club, her memoir of growing up with a dysfunctional family in Texas. This time around, she focuses on her coming of age years with a fantastic precision and recollection.
What I most admired about this book is the way you can see how a teenage girl can be bad and good, how she can be smart and yet naive, wild and yet sheltered all at the same time. Her stories about how her sexual emotions were budding was so very true to life- while she was having new feelings and registering new sensations in her body, she did not immediately conclude that intercourse was inevitable. In her mind, she envisioned more benign hugging and hand holding and kissing- ultimately more intimacy and connection that girls think of as love.
What is so fascinating is that while she knew all that she needed and more than she wanted from her mother, she still didn't put that together with what she was desiring. She even mentions how Lolita was so wrong when she read it because it was so polar opposite to her experiences. And how it was clearly a man's forcing boy thoughts into a young girl's mind and his twisted interpretation. While she may have done things that could be concluded as being flirty, young girls many times do not understand how their seemingly innocent actions can be wildly interpreted.
I related very much to this book- while I was a much better behaved girl in middle and high school when it came to authority, and my home live was more balanced (though dysfunctional in ways, I did have my drug and drinking period at the same time frame that she did and related a lot to the feelings of boredom and anxiety that wanting more gives a teenager. And I clearly remember being head over heels for my first boyfriend, as she was, and just never thinking that we needed to move any further than making out for hours. And, being devastated in how wrong I was when he broke up with me.
I can't wait to pass this one on...
February 9, 2014
I went back and forth deciding between 2 or 3 stars rating. Ultimately, it's a low 2.5.
I read her first book, The Liar's Club, last year and gobbled it up. It was so well written. Cherry was strangely written. Beautifully so, in many ways, poetic and lyrical. Not surprising, as she's also published several books of poetry.
There's a shift in POV somewhere around the middle of the book. It worked for a little while, creating this cerebral dreamlike experience. It just never went back to the original POV and lost its charm after a chapter or two. The first part of the book seems like it belong in the beginning of a different book and sets you up for a story that is never revealed in the story.
I'll still read the follow-up to Cherry, which is Lit.
I read her first book, The Liar's Club, last year and gobbled it up. It was so well written. Cherry was strangely written. Beautifully so, in many ways, poetic and lyrical. Not surprising, as she's also published several books of poetry.
There's a shift in POV somewhere around the middle of the book. It worked for a little while, creating this cerebral dreamlike experience. It just never went back to the original POV and lost its charm after a chapter or two. The first part of the book seems like it belong in the beginning of a different book and sets you up for a story that is never revealed in the story.
I'll still read the follow-up to Cherry, which is Lit.
Read
January 4, 2026Bof. El despertar sexual de una chica en un entorno rural (con las drogas a la orden del día, no hay nada más que hacer en los pueblos) mezcla esa pulsión por cometer estupideces locas para huir del aburrimiento (porque no encajas en ningún lugar) y crecer entre amigas reales y amigas putativas, todas necesarias. Me ha encantado esta historia donde el inicio del deseo tiene que ver poco con el sexo, del cual habrán dos o tres episodios brevísimos, y más con las dinámicas con los chicos, las fantasías irrealizables, la presencia (o ausencia) familiar y la amistad como puente para ser frente al otro.
Karr me ha encantado como novelista, está certera como una poeta en las imágenes y los juegos de ingenio, pero no habla con una consciencia exagerada, sino que su tono es siempre fresquísimo. No sabía si me iba a gustar pero boff -salvo un fragmento al final un poco durillo- me flipa.
Karr me ha encantado como novelista, está certera como una poeta en las imágenes y los juegos de ingenio, pero no habla con una consciencia exagerada, sino que su tono es siempre fresquísimo. No sabía si me iba a gustar pero boff -salvo un fragmento al final un poco durillo- me flipa.
December 31, 2022
*3.75!!!!
The writing was the TRUE TRUE standout of this book.. the way karr uses words…. Damn u can tell she’s a poet. Adversely I think she is less adept at stringing a story together — the essential skill of a novelist. NEEEED to read some of her poetry and her other (more highly-regarded) memoir.
The writing was the TRUE TRUE standout of this book.. the way karr uses words…. Damn u can tell she’s a poet. Adversely I think she is less adept at stringing a story together — the essential skill of a novelist. NEEEED to read some of her poetry and her other (more highly-regarded) memoir.
February 17, 2025
¡Qué talento tiene esta mujer! Deseando leer la tercera parte. El final me ha parecido brutal.
June 26, 2013
You read "Lit" and you know of Mary Karr's importance as a contemporary poet, but how do you feel about it? What was her childhood experience, and how does it dovetail into "Lit"'s beginning at her arrival at college? So, you order "The Liar's Club" and "Cherry" in order to understand her background. Unfortunately, "Cherry" arrives first. You try to resist it; after all, it seems like reading them in order would be best. You thumb about one third of the way through the book and read "just a little" to get a feel for this part of the story. You are instantly sucked in. You know these people; they are SO like your own high school classmates. You fancy yourself as being similar to Karr in certain ways--living in a small, somewhat rigid Southern town; always outside of the "right" school cliques; intelligent, but unfortunately, too aware of that fact and always trying hard to cash in and use it to your advantage. Your personal saving grace was two incredibly normal parents. You summon all of your willpower and put the book out of sight. A couple of more days pass and "Liar's Club" still doesn't arrive. You give in and starting at the beginning, read "Cherry" straight through in one long afternoon. You take a day to digest what you experienced by reading the book, and log on to Goodreads to share your thoughts with other readers.
The finely wrought wording of a poet, depth of feeling, and brutal, sometimes jaw-dropping honesty are hallmarks of this part of Karr's memoir trilogy just as they are in "Lit." Some readers have said they were very put off by Karr's use of second-person point of view. As a student of literature and writing and also a former English teacher, I loved it. It's not easy to sustain (as witnessed by my own attempt in this review), but it imparts a bond of intimacy between the writer and the reader that is very hard to resist. "You" forces the readers to project themselves into the mind and emotions of the writer. Another characteristic that may be off-putting is the frank sexuality and language. I only saw it as another aspect of reality in Karr's writing--honest and believable and not at all used for shocking effect. Karr is a scant four months older than I am, so I can testify that she is merely reflecting the attitudes of teens at that time.
If you are a female in the age cohort with Karr, I can't imagine you would not appreciate her memoir. It might have been written by almost any of us--though doubtfully as well as she has done.
The finely wrought wording of a poet, depth of feeling, and brutal, sometimes jaw-dropping honesty are hallmarks of this part of Karr's memoir trilogy just as they are in "Lit." Some readers have said they were very put off by Karr's use of second-person point of view. As a student of literature and writing and also a former English teacher, I loved it. It's not easy to sustain (as witnessed by my own attempt in this review), but it imparts a bond of intimacy between the writer and the reader that is very hard to resist. "You" forces the readers to project themselves into the mind and emotions of the writer. Another characteristic that may be off-putting is the frank sexuality and language. I only saw it as another aspect of reality in Karr's writing--honest and believable and not at all used for shocking effect. Karr is a scant four months older than I am, so I can testify that she is merely reflecting the attitudes of teens at that time.
If you are a female in the age cohort with Karr, I can't imagine you would not appreciate her memoir. It might have been written by almost any of us--though doubtfully as well as she has done.
January 23, 2021
Después de lo mucho que me impactó El club de los mentirosos y lo mucho que me sorprendió Iluminada, tenía muchas expectativas depositadas en La flor. Sin embargo, creo que en esta ocasión Mary Karr resulta un tanto repetitiva en su narración, con sus constantes símiles ("como..."), en mi opinión, inútiles; con el gran riesgo que ha asumido utilizando una segunda persona para contar la historia (que en mi caso me ha distanciado de la lectura y además me ha parecido bastante tediosa); y, por supuesto, con el tema autobiográfico, ya tratado anteriormente. Aún así, diría que no me ha disgustado del todo, porque sigue narrando con una extremada brillantez y humor episodios de la adolescencia donde las mujeres nos podemos ver muy reflejadas. Espero que la próxima vez que publique un libro nos sorprenda con otro estilo o género literario, pues tengo la sensación de que conozco su vida más que la de mucha gente de mi alrededor. Me quedo con el pasaje de las ciruelas y con la historia de su pérdida de la virginidad, que me ha hecho reír mucho.
March 20, 2021
Si al principio me costó un poco sumergirme en el libro fue porque siempre he considerado a Mary la menos interesante de su familia, y en 'La flor' la protagonista es ella. Sin embargo, poco a poco, y gracias a pequeños detalles y narraciones de sucesos que ya dejaban vislumbrar el cauce hacia la moraleja, el porqué de dedicar un libro a hablar de su yo adolescente, fui recordando que esto no estaba escrito por cualquiera, que Mary Karr no me suele decepcionar y que no escribe por escribir, que capítulos enteros de una Mary perdida tenían que llevar a algún sitio. Efectivamente, una vez más caigo rendida a sus pies. A mí me encantan las historias de lo que pasa por dentro y me parece muy bonito y catártico dar homenaje a una etapa de tu vida en la que estás perdidísima. Cada uno tiene su propio viaje, pero qué cierto es que 'como en casa, en ningún sitio' y qué importante es saberse analizar y entenderse, tardar el tiempo que sea necesario para comprender los motivos que te llevan a tomar malas decisiones, para acabar resurgiendo y encontrarte.
February 1, 2013
I ran across this book in the bookstore one day and it looked interesting, so I bought it. Before I'd even finished reading it, I ordered The Liar's Club, her first memoir (These two books and her third memoir, Lit, can all stand on their own but it makes much more sense to read them all in order). This book is simply amazing. Some events in Karr's story are so harrowing that I had to keep reminding myself that she (obviously) made it out alive. I love the way she presents her family members--she doesn't gloss over or try to excuse any of their flaws, but she reveals the circumstances that made them the way they were. They obviously love one another but they're at the mercy of forces much larger than themselves. Karr's voice is superb--the contrast between her spot-on colloquial dialogue and her gorgeous, poetic narrative never feels disjointed. I have a feeling this will be a book I come back to in the future.
June 7, 2013
I did not like this book nearly as much as I wanted. Partly, this is my own fault, as I thought the book would cover more of the time after the author left Leechfield for California. I kept waiting for the book to get to the point (the point being to get out of Leechfield, as described in the prologue) but eventually it dawned on me that wasn't going to happen. There were parts of this book that were good, but I got really annoyed with the use of the second-person narrative and the author's parenthetical ruminations about how self-absorbed she was at the time. ex: "(In those years if you were fine, everyone you cared about was fine by extension.)" I think her sister Lecia would have written a much more interesting memoir.
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