For 45 minutes, they chew their food and cast longing glances at one another. Strauss' presence partly explains why she's upset: This lunch turns out to be the first chance they've had to see each other in several days. Karr leads me into the hotel's restaurant, where her fianci, British publisher Peter Strauss, is waiting. (Karr's features are so compact and well-defined that she looks like an Al Hirschfeld sketch.) 'I feel like I've been lashed to the mast,' she says, reeling off the list of appointments and appearances she's already logged today. 'I'd rather take a whuppin' than do one more goddamned interview,' Karr barks at me when I meet her in a New York hotel lobby, her dark eyes shooting out little cartoon sparks of pique. And - to my general discomfort - she is still willing to do some shit-kicking. 'I was small-boned and skinny,' Karr writes, 'but more than able to make up for that with sheer meanness.'Īt 42, Mary Karr is still small-boned and skinny. By the age of 8, this East Texan was a world-class settler of scores, whether that meant biting the hell out of some kid who had wronged her or shinnying up a tree with a BB gun in order to pump lead into an entire offending family. She wanted a higher standard of life than the local average, and she feared destitution.BY DWIGHT GARNER | one of the great joys of Mary Karr's memoir 'The Liars' Club' is reading about what an adept little shit-kicker she was. #4 My mother was a teacher, and she would spend her mornings at a local college studying for her teaching certificate. I spent the summer reading the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, and I imagined running away to Africa to find a man like Tarzan. #3 I spent that summer reading, and I fell into a deep well of idleness, which was stifling. She had a Snoopy box purse that smelled like grated lemon peel and baby powder. She represented herself as both entitled to and surprised by her pampering. #2 Violet was beautiful and much loved by the general public.

One night, the hamster nosed out of his poorly latched cage and scampered across the glowing iron surface of the gas heater, blistering the bottoms of his tiny pink feet. Sample Book Insights: #1 Violet had a hamster and a miniature turtle who lived in a shallow plastic bowl under a palm tree with snap-on fronds.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Cherry by mary karr