The Liars’ Club is described as," A classic of American literature.... Mary Karr conjures the simmering heat and bottled rage of life in a small Texas oil town with an intensity that gains power from the fact that it's fact. " — James Atlas, The New York Times Magazine
The Liars’ Club was written in 1995 based on the life of author Mary Karr. She writes a compelling and riveting memoir with various topics which many authors find hard to write. Mary left nothing untold, even though at times when reading, one can tell Karr became hesitant in telling her story. Time magazine sums it up greatly when said,“Mary Karr’s God-awful childhood has a calamitous appeal. The choice in the book is between howling misery and howling laughter, and the reader veers toward laughter. Karr has survived to write a drop-dead reply to the question, ‘Ma, what was it like when you were a little girl?”.
The Liars’ Club is a memoir written by Mary Karr. The book begins with a partial description of a night in 1961 in Leechfield, Texas. This small oil town in East Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico, is where Mary, her father, mother, and sister live. On the night in question there is quite a commotion taking place. Mary’s mother has been taken away, for what we do not know, and her father is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a doctor is asking the very young Mary to show him the marks, but Mary has no marks on her body to speak of. The two young girls are then taken out of the house by the sherrif and we the readers, are left wondering… what is going on?
As this memoir progresses we become acquainted with “The Lairs Club”, the nickname title given to Mary’s father and his friends who meet somewhat infrequently at a bar or in the back of a bait shop.
At these meetings, Mary’s father tells the others fantastic and astounding stories about his life that seem to be bordering on the untruthful side. Mary is the only child to ever be present at these meetings.
We learn too, that Mary’s mother, a college educated daughter of cotton farmers, has been married seven times throughout the course of her life, Mary’s father being marriage number four. At one point Mary’s mother and father get into a larger fight than is customary for their home, and Mary’s mother takes Mary and her sister Lecia to their Grandma Moore’s house. It is here that we are introduced to this rather odd character, who never seems to be short on advice or criticism.
Later in the memoir, Grandma Moore is diagnosed with cancer and comes to live with the family. She changes the way the family does everything, and to Mary, her mother becomes a figment of her once vibrant self. During all of this Mary’s father stays away from home so as to not upset the not so delicate balance of sanity in the house (Grandma Moore harbors a deep distain for him). The cancer eventually catches up with Grandma Moore and she first goes into a coma, after apparently attempting suicide during hurricane Carla.
Throughout all of these episodes we can see the steady decline of Mary’s mother’s mental stability. When Grandma Moore finally does die, we see her psychic health chip away that much more. And eventually Mary’s mother plunges off the deep end when she receives news of the inheritance she is set to receive from her mother’s estate. We never really learn the sum of the estate, but it is clear that it is probably a good deal more than $100,000. It is at this point that Mary’s mother snaps, going through the house, scrawling lipstick all over mirrors, and shattering them when she is out of lipstick. She burns all of the mail that came in that day. Then, without warning, she rounds up all of the girls’ things, clothes, toys, etc. and proceeds to toss them into a bonfire in the back yard.
She then grabs a knife and heads for the girls’ bedroom, and seeing them lying under a sheet completely covered, calls the doctor and tells him that she has stabbed and killed her two daughters. However, the girls are alive. This is the episode that the beginning of the memoir neglected to describe in full detail.
After Mary’s mother is released from the mental hospital, the family embarks on a trip to the Seattle World’s Fare, but they never each their destination. Instead, while making a stop in Colorado, Mary’s mother, on an impulse, decides to buy a house in a random mountain town near Pike’s Peak. The parent’s get divorced, and Mary’s mother gets remarried, again, this is number five, to a man she meats in the local bar.
In the last section of this compelling story, it is shown how the relationship between Mary, Lecia and their father has shifted. Since he is now not presently living with them, as the southern gentlemen tend to do after divorce, left his children alone. It is around Father’s Day and the girls attempted to call him and were not able to get through, so they begin to make cards for him to send. Hector, their new step-father, had mentioned he would like if they would make him Father’s Day cards, but the reactions and action of the girls show they still do not consider him any father figure and hope their father will begin making contact soon. They refuse to give up hope. The next morning, their mother takes them to the post office to send the Father’s Day cards and we show how their mother is still not mentally stable. She has now turned to alcohol and pills. Mary said, “She’d brought a Bloody Mary in a tumbler with a lid on it, like a baby would sip out of” then continues and says, “I saw for the first time how drinking had worn away her looks”. This shows how her mother is slowly sipping away. She is definitely a new person from in the past, yet still not “all there”.
The memoir follows with Mary’s mother moving the family to a town named Antelope. There they rent a house and the girls begin a new school with Mary feeling lonely and friendless, she eventually gets into a fight. After the fight, her initial thought was “Daddy would have been proud of that eye”. It is interesting to see that even though her father is not present, she still has that lingering feeling of trying to impress him and it shows how she still wants that relationship with him back.
Towards the end of the memoir, Mary begins to reveal to us what she wouldn’t share in the beginning. We find out that as a child, she was molested by her male babysitter. It goes to describe, as she remembers, details of that night and how he got her to do what she does. It is interesting because when Mary describes heart breaking or bad times or experiences in her life, she uses her humor to divert us from thinking it is as bad as it sounds. She tells of times she remembers in her past and she tends to ramble on before actually hitting the point. For example, during the revealing of her molestation, she begins talking about Christian soldiers and how they should come and “lop his pecker off”. She adds bits of witticism in her writing to somewhat alleviate the seriousness.
After Mary reveals the story of her molestation, it goes to show again, her mother not mentally stable when she threatens to shoot Hector, her husband at the time. After returning home from a drunken night at the bar, Hector, already a little upset from stories told earlier in the night, gets mad and calls Lecia a bitch, which sets something off in their mother. She proceeds to aim a gun at Hector while he is sitting on the couch.
Mary decides to fling herself over him because she knew her mother would not shoot her. As she keeps on telling the events of that night, bits of humor are kicked in and she talks about when she looked around “the whole scene had struck me as goofy”. The night of chaos ends with Mary running to get her principle and the family acts “normal” as soon as he knocks on the door with Mary.
The next day, Lecia and Mary call their father and demand he send for them. After staying with their father for a while, their mother and Hector come back for some dresses when a fight between Hector and their father begins after Hector told their mother to “get her ass in gear”. That night, Mary’s mother took Hector to the hospital, checked out of their hotel room and returned to her family. Mary said, “She stayed with Daddy till his death, stayed well into her own dotage”.
The memoir forwards to 17 years into the future beginning with Mary’s dad having a stroke while sitting at the American Legion. The story ends with Mary’s relationship with her father becoming better, slowly. She took care of him constantly with her mother and in the beginning, it was a bit hard, but her father became happy towards the end of his life. It is interesting that Mary’s relationship with her father came full circle, back to those days with the Liars’ Club. Even some of the guys from the club came and spent time with her father.
The relationship with Mary and her mother improved greatly as well. While in the attic one day, Mary discovered wedding rings and had remembered her Grandma Moore showing her a picture of two young children. She confronted her mother about it and found out they were half siblings. Her mother and her were able to connect and realized how important family was to them. The relationship with Mary and her parents became quite touching and even though it was such a compelling story, Mary was still able to douse some humor in her writing of this memoir, talking about how her dad “cooed like a baby” when she lifted him into his wheelchair. We as readers are able to feel for Mary and connect to her and the relationships with members in our own families, in one form or another.
Group Members: Dana Heileman and Jonathan Fessel
