The Tenth Book
My progress in the book challenge is not going as smoothly as expected, I’m only on book #10. At this rate I won’t make my 100, and that’s fine. The challenge is more about motivated me to read more. The new book, The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr is a beautifully written memoir. I’ve had the book for years, watching it age on my book shelf. For some reason, long since forgotten, I assumed it would be a depressing, sad story.
The Liar’s Club is a beautifully written memoir, using humor to balance out the telling of a very difficult childhood. Karr writes about her parents with a descriptiveness that I could only dream about. Her introduction sets the stage for what we’re about to read; she informs us that her story is true, verified (to the extent that a memoir can be verified) by mother and sister. There is a place early in the book where she says that her sister would have shared the incident differently, reminding the reader that memory is just that-one person’s view of a slice of time. It was woven into the story skillfully; a perfect example for writers coping with the occasional tidbit, more remembrance than hard fact.
I still anticipate bits of the story to be sad and challenging. As a writer her work inspires me, as a reader I’ve already gotten wrapped up in her story. After the book is finished I’ll come back to examine her work as ‘memoir’, for now it’s a compelling story.
