MY GOOD FRIEND told me that Mary Karr’s Lit was the best non-fiction she’d read in years, that while she couldn’t bear to put it down, the prose was so divine it made her want to stop after each passage just to savor it. This friend is no easy sell when it comes to writing and reading, so ok: add that book to my reading list, stat.
If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that we sisters of The Sister Project are all about memoir. Ours, yours, or anyone else’s, as long as she’s got something to say, lessons to share, and a vibrant voice in which to sing it all out. All of this, I’m happy to report, is true of Karr’s latest book, which is by turns hilarious and so painful you want to put your head under the pillow and weep.
Through the course of the book, Karr finds her voice as a poet, marries and divorces, drinks to excess and then manages to dry out, and finds God. And, relevant to TSP, she’s got a fantastic sister story to tell, too. The book moves forward like a freight train, begging you to stay up too late to read just a bit more. But best of all is Karr’s command of her prose, which reads like poetry: smart, economical, inspired verse. I never read Karr’s bestselling 1995 The Liar’s Club, but after loving Lit, that’s the next pick for my nightstand.
How about you, sisters? Do you have a story to share? Tell us.
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The Liar’s Club was excellent; so was Cherry, another of Mary Karr’s books. I haven’t read Lit yet, but it’s going on my list too.
Another excellent memoir was The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.
I think the hardest thing about writing a memoir is knowing where to start and how to make it flow. I’m always afraid that my attempts at memoir sound suspiciously like my third grade attempts at diary-keeping. “Today I went to school. We have homework. Mom made meatloaf for dinner. I hate meatloaf.”