Mary Karr Critical Essay | Critical Review by Cyra McFadden

Critical Review by Cyra McFadden

SOURCE: McFadden, Cyra. “There's No Lie as Big as the Truth.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (16 July 1995): 1, 12.

In the following review, McFadden discusses the themes of lies, truth, memory, and storytelling in The Liars' Club.

Memoirs inhabit the middle ground between truth and fiction. They can't stick to the facts, and only the facts, because we don't remember past events as clearly as we remember how we felt about them, which is a different kind of truth. And sometimes, as in Mary Karr's memoir about her East Texas childhood, the events themselves are so bizarre, no novelist could get away with them. Who'd believe a grandmother so cruel that when she dies of cancer, 8-year-old Mary has to restrain herself from singing, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead”? An alcoholic mother who's been married seven times and as a hobby of sorts—she's bored to tears with...
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