Cherry

My only problem with Karr's books is that they end. I want to stay in her world , which feels like her heart and somehow my heart as well. Her language is at once lyrical and grounded. Seeing her recreate her past so intimately seems to urge me to do the same and I honestly think reading her memoirs has benefitted my therapy.

What does Mary Karr have left to prove? She already wrote the definitive memoir of a child's life in an East Texas hellhole, "The Liars' Club," which as a first-person narrative remains better than anything I've ever come across. Why risk another trip to the well? Can you exceed expectations when so many of them, like mine, are off the charts?I'm in a funny position writing this, because I expected to come here and write about my disappointment with "Cherry," why it wasn't up to par with "Liars' Club." But reading all the one- and two-star reviews, some of which raise valid points, others of which are just all wet, I feel a little more protective about what I just read.No, it's not as involving as "Liars' Club." Karr isn't the passive youngster anymore, and she takes on a wider swath of her life, from just before sixth grade all the way up through high school, meaning there isn't the concentration of time that worked with "Liars' Club." Our narrator is changing this time, and quickly.More problematic, there is Karr's use of the second-person singular for the bulk of the book, describing her actions as if you are her. It doesn't work, feeling arch and odd instead of inclusive. Karr's budding sensibilities as a poet also come into play, with the help of a friend suspiciously named Meredith Bright, and you either will identify with their precocious conversations on absurdist theater or, like me, feel distanced by it. But it's her life, and she should tell it as it is.The best part of the book is its first third, with its account of elementary and junior high school life. Karr's sharp eye for detail and her fluidity with language, so stunning in "Liars' Club," doesn't fail her here. She recalls the posture of a picked-on classmate "till her whole body became a sort of living question mark, the punctuation with which she responded to every mean sentence we could construct." Then there's her fear when approached by a boy she likes: "Part of me is also crazily rewinding to play back my whole walk across the field, for surely I did some stupid thing. I wouldn't pick my nose or anything...but I could have been skipping or singing some goofy song under my breath."Later, she will find herself recruited to give this same boy a long leg massage, in a riotously funny passage in which she gets hot and bothered learning the critical distinction between gastrocs and hamstrings.While people here note the presence of drugs, in all fairness they don't show up for more than a hundred pages, and she doesn't exactly turn into Ozzy Osbourne. She smokes some joints, and tries a few other things, but seems a bit removed from the drug culture even as she writes about it. Actually, I was glad to have the drugs come into play, as it beat reading about her reading Howard Nemerov. She has sex, too, but is shier about describing that than I would have expected from "Liars' Club."Karr is a virtuoso at description, and tying up the loose ends of a disorderly life. She makes for exciting, vivid company. If you liked reading Stephen King's "The Body," or Russell Baker's "Growing Up," you will like "Cherry." Even if you didn't like "The Body" or "Growing Up," you will like "Cherry."But you will like "Liars' Club" so much more.

Maybe I had high expectations for this book because I thoroughly enjoyed The Liars' Club. The Liars' club was funny, cleverly written and held your attention. This book started off well but lost me about half way through it. It is written in such a way where there are few or no quotation marks and it is hard to distinguish between what is being said and what is being thought and what is just plain being described at times. And for some reason, it just keeps going down hill the further you get into it. There are long passages of observation that can go on for a couple of pages, which I just had to skip over after awhile. This is the only book I have ever picked up and 30 pages from the end, I put it down and never finished it.

I have completed the trilogy of May Karr’s brilliant memoirs. I suspect that Mary Karr and I are approximately the same age, and while much is different in her story, much is the same so each volume has been special and encouraging. The middle volume, Cherry is often hilarious and perfectly captures the awkward years and ridiculous traumas that are inflicted on too many children. Still, Mary’s resilience and bravery show the way.

I'm just a few years younger than Mary and grew up on the beaches of California in the mid-seventies (also with little supervision), so I could relate to much of the teenage surf and drug culture she describes. I enjoyed comparing Mary's teen years to mine, both occuring during a cutting-edge transitional time in American history--the 1970's. After reading the Liar's Club, I was interested to see how her life turned out, and I felt that this book was a good follow-up to the story of her childhood. The chapters don't follow each other in a direct relationship from one to the next, but they do make progress through the years. The Liar's Club makes a ten (or so) year skip near the end, and this book fills in a lot of that time, but with the focus on herself, not so much on her wacky, selfish, alcoholic mother. Some other reviewers complained about the use of the third person. She doesn't use it all the time, but I thought it added a layer of interest and introspection when she did.

Stage 2 of Mary Kate’s life. Interesting.

But Mary Karr will reveal them to you herself, line-by-line, page-by-page, and in this series, amazingly, book-by-book.As a psychologist, I find I often shy away from memoir, particularly if it's touted as being "confessional", but in Mary Karr's books, I find myself immediately and securely taken into her (surely) unique world(s), but then -- resonating with the truth and the courage and the clarity in her memory and her insights -- deeper into my own, in ways I frankly was not expecting.Karr's vision is just so damn clear and sharp -- unsparing, but tender at every moment, and actually, (as my old friend Ed Hirsch might have put it when I knew him once), thrilling.As someone who has written poetry for years, but hasn't a lick of prose in him, I'm now going to turn to her poetry, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't already known well.This is simply delicious writing, and brave and luminous (black and blue, down and dirty, crazy and brilliant) living writ true.You'll want her to live (and write) forever.

The book arrived promptly and I was surprised and delighted that it appears to be brand new. Thank you!

Karr is a poet and it shows. If you like first person coming of age tales, you'll be wildly impressed by how brilliantly she shifts this genre into something fresh and funny and also creates these sentences that remind you why you read in the first place.

Received this item to find the large corner of the front cover torn off. This did not occur in transit as the missing piece wasn't in the package and the parcel showed no damage.Don't trust the descriptions given.

Quick delivery. Book a little more beat up than expected but overall good.

It arrived two weeks early and in great condition!