BOOKISH FRIDAY: “THE LIARS’ CLUB”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I enjoy sharing excerpts from books…and connecting with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What better way to spend a Friday!

Today’s featured book is a memoir:  The Liars’ Club, by Mary Karr.

 

 

 

Book Beginnings:  (Texas, 1961)

My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark.  I was seven, and our family doctor knelt before me where I sat on a mattress on the bare floor.  He wore a yellow golf shirt unbuttoned so that sprouts of hair showed in a V shape on his chest.  I had never seen him in anything but a white starched shirt and a gray tie.  The change unnerved me.

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56:  Except for these apparitions of Mother, we were left the rest of the summer in Daddy’s steady if distracted care.  At some point, the men of the Liars’ Club arrived with their pickups and toolboxes to turn our garage into an extra bedroom for my parents, who had been sleeping on a pull-out sofa in the living room during Grandma’s visit.

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Blurb:  The dazzling, prizewinning, wickedly funny tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood—the book that sparked a renaissance in memoir

When it was published in 1995, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, as well as bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all.

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What do you think?  Do the excerpts tempt you to pick this one up and read?

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Here is a glimpse of my work station in my newly rearranged office:

 

 

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Enjoy your weekend!

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