My father comes into focus for me on a Liars' Club afternoon. He sits at a wobbly card table weighed down by a bottle. Even now the scene seems so real to me that I can't but write it in the present tense. Mary Karr grew up in a swampy East Texas refinery town in a volatile and defiantly loving family. In this funny, devastating, haunting memoir and with a raw and often painful honesty, she looks back at life with a painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip over into psychosis, and a hard-drinking, fist-swinging father who liked nothing better than to spin tales with his cronies at the Liars' Club. When it was published in 1995, The Liars' Club raised the art of memoir to a new level and brought about a dramatic revival of the form. It is a classic that paints a harsh world redeemed by Karr's warmth, intelligent humour and finely spun prose; The Liars' Club is both heart-stopping and heart-felt.

The Liars' Club - Picador Classic

Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story. Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

Sinners Welcome - Poems

A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar's Club and Lit. Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous-that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power-illness, death, love's agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you're an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.

Tropic of Squalor - Poems

A celebration of curiosity, compassion, and the surprising power of fear, based on the New York Times bestselling author and renowned professor's 2015 commencement address at Syracuse University."Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious & compassionate will save your ass."Every year there are one or two commencement speeches that strike a chord with audiences far greater than the student bodies for which they are intended. In 2015 Mary Karr's speech to the graduating class of Syracuse University caught fire, hailed across the Internet as one of the most memorable in recent years, and lighting up the Twittersphere. In Now Go Out There, Karr explains why having your heart broken is just as-if not more-important than falling in love; why getting what you want often scares you more than not getting it; how those experiences that appear to be the worst cannot be so easily categorized; and how to cope with the setbacks that inevitably befall all of us. "Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides, " she cautions. "Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human."An ideal-and beautifully designed-gift for a graduate or for anyone looking for some down-to-earth life advice, Now Go Out There is destined to become a classic.

Now Go Out There - (and Get Curious)

Texas, 1961. La petite Mary a sept ans. Un médecin l'examine en présence du shérif. Sa mère vient d'essayer de la tuer avec un couteau de boucher... Trente ans plus tard, Mary Karr tente de faire la paix avec son enfance passée à Leechfield, petite bourgade perdue des Etats-Unis. Elle se souvient d'une famille peu commune avec un père ouvrier enclin à la bagarre, une mère alcoolique mariée sept fois et qui a fortement tendance à dérailler, une sœur aînée en totale rupture avec ses parents et une grand-mère tyrannique.

Bande De Menteurs - Occasion

" Quand j'avais sept ans, ma mère a tenté de me tuer avec un couteau de boucher. Je n'ai jamais compris pourquoi. "
Retrouvant avec ses yeux de petite fille son enfance assiégée, cruelle, malheureuse, Mary Karr en a exorcisé les démons par ce récit pétillant d'ironie, d'insolence et de tendresse. Elle y raconte, cinglante et drôle, Leechfield dans les années soixante, cette bourgade provinciale du Texas, infestée de moustiques, puant la friture et le pétrole. Elle y dresse, surtout, la chronique d'un vrai champ de bataille familial. Tableau émouvant et d'un humour dévastateur. Le père, ouvrier, à moitié indien, étrangement silencieux à la maison, n'est-il pas le meilleur conteur de cette fameuse " Bande de Menteurs " qui aime se retrouver au bar, autour d'une bière salée ? Et ses sept mariages n'expliquent-ils pas que la mère, superbe, mais elle aussi buvant sec, soit si "nerveuse ", comme on le dit pudiquement ? 
Quand à la sœur aînée, prête à tout réconcilier, ne partage-t-elle pas avec Mary un amour fervent pour cette folle famille déchirée entre les reproches sourds et les crises frénétiques ?
Au bout du voyage se tient un inconcevable secret où se réuniront les pleurs et les rires, la violence et l'innocence, le désespoir et l'espérance. Jamais, peut-être, des mémoires d'enfance n'avaient atteint une telle hauteur littéraire, alliant superbement la poésie de la tragédie et la verve de la comédie.

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