MM Book Club: The Liar's Club by Mary Karr

In the Memoir Mentors Book Club, we read memoirs with a memoirist’s eye, looking for things that we could use in our writing or things we want to avoid.

This time we’ll be discussing Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liars’ Club*.*

The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, 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 age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. This unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable” (USA Today) today as it ever was.

### The Liars’ Club – Book Club Questions

• One of the biggest challenges and worries we have as memoirists is how our family will react to our stories. Mary Karr writes with sometimes brutal honesty about her dysfunctional family. Did she use any methods to soften the impact on her family? Did her writing give you ideas on how to represent your own family?
• In the introduction, Karr says, “I chose to write The Liars’ Club as memoir instead of fiction: when fortune hands you such characters, why bother to make stuff up?” She also said, “I chose to write The Liars’ Club as memoir instead of fiction: when fortune hands you such characters, why bother to make stuff up?” She also said in a later interview: “When I tried to write about my life in a novel, I discovered that I behaved better in fiction than I did in real life. The truth is that I found it easier to lie in a novel, and what I wanted most of all was to tell the truth.”
  What are your thoughts on these statements?
• What do you think about fictionalizing your life story or the genre of autofiction (autobiography + fiction)?
• Have you read autofiction?
• Karr says in the introduction that when the first book first came out, she was getting 400-500 letters a week from people who said they identified with her story. She also said that the story helped heal some of the family trauma of her past even though that was not the aim of the book. Do you think your story might also do the same for your family and others? Are there other books that did this for you?
• Were there any stories or sections that took away from the main plot or distracted you?
• Is the story plot-driven, moving briskly from event to event? Or is it character-driven, moving more slowly, delving into characters’ inner-lives?
• What is the story’s central conflict—character vs. character…vs. society…or vs. nature (external)? Or an emotional struggle within the character (internal)? How does the conflict create tension?
• Is the plot chronological? Or does it veer back and forth between past and present?
• Do any characters change or grow by the end of the story? Do they come to view the world and their relationship to it differently?
• Share your favorite quote(s) and why you felt it was noteworthy.
• Would you be compelled to keep reading if this were not a book club assignment?
• What did you think of the book’s length? (265 pages)
• Were there any surprises? Were they effective?
• Was the point of view and character voice consistent?
• What were the major strengths and weaknesses of the book?
• Do you find the narrator(s) and other characters likable? Believable?
• Of all the people described in the book, who did you most relate to or empathize with, and why?
• Were there any inconsistencies that bothered you?
• How honest do you think the author was being?
• What gaps do you wish the author had filled in? Were there points where you thought she shared too much?
• Is the ending a surprise or predictable? Does the end unfold naturally? Or is it forced, heavy-handed, or manipulative? Is the ending satisfying, or would you prefer a different ending?
• Is there anything about this book that you want to emulate in your own writing?
• Is there anything that you want to avoid in your own writing?
• Finally, what did you take away from the book? What themes or ideas resonated with you, and how has the book impacted your understanding of memoir as a genre?

Book club Whatsapp group:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/Lh819vvK3Mf1nGdvAFLdEX