Lit: A Memoir

Lit: A Memoir
Mary Karr

The long awaited sequel to the beloved and bestselling ‘The Liars’ Club’ and ‘Cherry’ – a memoir about a self-professed ‘blackbelt sinner’s’ descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness, and her astonishing resurrection.‘If you’d told me, even a year before I start taking my son to church regular that I’d wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would’ve laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime? Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.’Mary Karr’s prizewinning ‘The Liars’ Club’ chronicled her hardscrabble Texas childhood and sparked a renaissance in memoir, cresting the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. ‘Cherry’, her ecstatically reviewed account of a psychedelic adolescence and a moving sexual coming-of-age, followed it into bestsellerdom. Now ‘Lit’ answers the question asked by thousands of fans: How did Karr make it out of that toxic upbringing to tell her own tale?Karr’s longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, blueblood poet who can quote Shakespeare by the yard produces a blond son they adore. But Karr can’t outrun her apocalyptic upbringing. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in ‘The Mental Marriott’ with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors awakens her to the possibility of joy again, and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since St. Augustine cried, ‘Give me chastity, Lord – but not yet!’ has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity.‘Lit’ is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. This hotly anticipated sequel brings Karr’s story full circle; it will endure in the hearts of readers alongside her influential and beloved earlier books. Simply put, it is a triumph.

MARY KARR

Lit

A Memoir

PRAISE (#ulink_3dd86807-58af-57bf-bb3c-d8fbb07a3c7b)

From the reviews of Lit:

‘Searing … A book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go. Chronicles with searching intelligence, humor and grace the author’s slow, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes painful discovery of her vocation and her voice as a poet and writer’

New York Times

‘A brutally honest, sparkling story’

Glamour

‘Karr continues to delight with her signature dark humor and pitch-perfect metaphors delivering large doses of wit and painful insights. There are plenty of memoirs about being drunk, but this one has Karr’s voice – both sure-footed and breezy – behind it’

Time Out

‘As irresistible as it is unflinchingly honest … With grace, saltiness and profanity galore, Karr undeniably re-establishes herself as one of our finest memoirists and storytellers’

San Francisco Chronicle

‘In a gravelly, ground-glass-under-your-heel voice that can take you from laughter to awe in a few sentences, Karr has written the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years’

New York Times Book Review

‘Dazzling … Lit reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art’

Boston Globe

‘Karr’s sharp and funny sensibility won me over to her previous two volumes, but what wins me over to Lit is the way her acute self-awareness conquers any hint that hers is the only version of this story. Karr is as funny as ever’

Washington Post

‘Karr could tell you what’s on her grocery list, and its humor would make you bust a gut. She holds the position of grande dame memoirista’

Los Angeles Times

‘A radiant, rueful, rip-roaring book … Warm enough to burn a hole in your heart’

Entertainment Weekly

DEDICATION (#ulink_d1a6d0f5-0361-5c7a-96c2-96b074bc2b08)

For Chuck and Lynn Pascale

and for Dev:

Thanks for the light.

Passage home? Never.

—The Odyssey, Book 5, Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)

CONTENTS

Cover (#u3db03464-b93e-51bf-bc23-a6b6cd5c5448)

Title Page (#ub0aed177-88ef-52be-9d76-0aea98789aac)

Praise (#ulink_5818072b-b6f7-54db-b839-739290302888)

Dedication (#ulink_cabe74a3-0136-5d60-bc59-90ed724ceea5)

Prologue: Open Letter to My Son (#ulink_79bf8507-9101-577e-9143-3306393e5812)

Side A: Now

Side B: Then (#ulink_f5181f13-2207-511c-ad3b-ac63ee731648)

I ESCAPE FROM THE TROPIC OF SQUALOR (#ulink_ec962fbb-343a-545c-a533-a920da7cb22f)

1 Lost in the Golden State (#ulink_9e4a3f40-4bb9-52ee-9a63-afcd41f0dece)

2 The Mother of Invention (#ulink_18b38913-e585-59c1-b700-1251c8cd94bf)

3 Lackluster College Coed (#ulink_03f04a0f-d61b-5b76-8e5b-4cd7e14365c1)

4 There’s No Biz Like Po-Biz (#ulink_afdf4597-7089-58bf-80d3-5ef9ab0fd6a9)

5 Never Mind (#ulink_b65096c9-f740-56dd-93ae-df5fdc2fd9f3)

II FLASHDANCE (#ulink_95414527-87d8-5e79-8162-237d6a43fa03)

6 Inheritance Tax Summer (#ulink_b0cec186-74bb-51c8-b6af-c6f81b928ab7)

7 The Constant Lovers (#ulink_9e86ac64-57ac-56c6-9665-f30af6691d3c)

8 Temporary Help (#litres_trial_promo)

9 There Went the Bride (#litres_trial_promo)