Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club springs from that American tradition
of fine memoirs of awful yet fondly remembered childhoods – it comes
with an endorsement from Tobias Wolff, and it also calls to mind Mona
Simpson’s autobiographical novels. It’s an unflinchingly honest book
and, with affection, eloquence and wit, it recreates aspects of all our
childhoods – and the adults who can fulfill our dreams, or fail us.
Mary Karr grew up in the sixties in Leechfield, a swampy Texas oil town
best known for hurricanes, mosquitos and the manufacture of Agent
Orange. Her wild and unconventional family stands in stark contrast to
more respectable God-fearing neighbours, whose children Mary delights in
outraging. Some of the more warmly drawn scenes in the book involve
Mary’s father who works at the refinery and is active in the union. He
regularly hangs out with his fellow oil workers at the American Legion
Bar, competing to tell the tallest tale in Texas as he shoots the breeze
with other members of the Liar’s Club. In doing so he earns a permanent
place in Mary’s heart as champion mythmaker, and she has evidently
inherited his talent as an extravagant storyteller.
Her mother, who fancies herself as a sort of ‘bohemian Scarlett O’Hara’,
never fits into town life; not only has she been to art school in New
York but she is ‘nervous’ and inclined to heavy drinking binges. Mary’s
mother’s breakdowns and long, drawn-out shouting matches between the
parents occupy a central role in this book and in Mary’s childhood. They
are vividly described in horrible detail, picturing the hurt of the
child who can see and feel but barely understand.
Other demons surface. A mean and puritanical grandmother comes to stay
to die of cancer, leaving behind gruesome memories of a slow and painful
(and odorous) death. While there she plagues Mary and her sister Lecia
with endless spiteful demands. At the age of seven Mary is sexually
assaulted by an older neighbourhood boy who she thought was just a
playmate. A couple of years later, when her parents separate and she
moves to Colorado, she is forced to perform oral sex on an unnamed, but
not forgotten babysitter.
The strength of The Liar’s Club lies in such moments, which are
recalled without self-pity and with such power that you almost feel that
you’re there, shirking from the awful smell of Grandma’s breath, trying
to understand why a man is peeing in your mouth. It’s here that Mary
Karr succeeds in reaching out to all our childhoods – the happy times
and the sad, the curiosity and the guilt and the shame of the no-longer
innocent. I found The Liar’s Club a little disappointing in
comparison to This Boy’s Life, as it lacks the single narrative
thrust of that book’s search for escape, but when you reach the end, and
share with the grown-up Mary the discovery of her mother’s secret
history, you are moved by the honesty and love of this moment.
Reviewed by Andrew Wille
