THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507270598
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
THE LIARS' CLUB
A Memoir
MARY KARR
Viking. 320 pp. $22.95.
IN HER new memoir, The Liars' Club, poet Mary Karr tells the story of several difficult years in her family's history. Her explanations are often colorful: ``First, they took off her toenail, then her toe, then her foot. Then they shot mustard gas through her leg till it was burnt black, and she screamed for six weeks nonstop. Then they took off her leg, and it was like a black stump laid up on a pillow... ''
Her style can be refreshingly honest, as in comments like this: ``Maybe it's wrong to blame Grandma Moore for much of the worst hurt in my family, but she was such a ring-tailed b---- that I do.''
But the events in the story do not add up. Karr begins by saying that she has several blank spaces in her life: ``Because it took so long for me to paste together what happened, I will leave that part of the story missing for awhile.''
Yet the spaces remain missing, partly because Karr gives conflicting answers to questions she raises. And partly because she skips 17 years between the story's beginning and end. The time of the memoir spans about 20 years, yet Karr only examines three of those years.
A black-haired, sharp-featured, part-Native American from Beechfield, Texas, Karr's father can tell a good tall tale, as can the other members of the ``Liars' Club.'' Her mother has a past ``as blank as the West Texas desert she came from.'' Both parents drink heavily.
Karr and her sister, Leicia, are feisty little girls ``known for mocking nuns in public and sassing teachers.'' In private, they worry about their mother's erratic behavior and their father's drinking. They also worry about being raped by one of the neighborhood kids and being sexually abused by a baby sitter.
The memoir is divided into three sections: Texas, 1961; Colorado, 1963; and Texas, 1980. During the first two sections, Karr's grandmother dies; her mother has a nervous breakdown; her parents divorce and remarry each other. The third section begins as her father has a stroke.
Section one opens as 6-year-old Mary and 8-year-old Leicia are being examined by a doctor for nonexistent stab wounds. When the memoir ends, readers learn that the mother hallucinated the stabbing of her children. But Karr never adequately explains why her mother would hallucinate such a thing. The stabbing, however, is one of the memoir's central events.
Readers also learn that her mentally unstable mother is five times divorced and has two missing children. Why would her mother marry five times? Why would she abandon her children? Karr gives conflicting answers. Nor does she adequately explain why her parents divorce when they travel to Colorado, why her mother tries to kill her new husband and why her parents eventually reconcile.
Before beginning the memoir, Karr acknowledges the contribution of several people, including her mother. Since this painful remembrance focuses on her mother's destructive behavior, Karr's words are noteworthy.
So is her message that, although her mother didn't read the book until it was complete, she supported it, knowing that the story it told would be painful. ``Her bravery in this is laudable. Her support means everything.''
The memoir presents such an unflattering portrait of her mother that one wonders at the pain Karr experienced as she was writing. Is this why some of the details seem to contradict each other? Is this why Karr paints her mother as ``a bona fide maniac'' in the first two-thirds of the book and makes light of her mother's behavior in the last part?
Straight thinking and more attention to editing would make this memoir seem less like a rough draft and more like the powerful testimony it has potential to be.
- MEMO: Diane Scharper is a poet who teaches memoir writing at Towson State
University in Maryland. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JOYCE RAVID
Mary Karr examines three years of her life in ``The Liars' Club.''
by CNB