I'm writing my own stories about growing up in Texas; so I naturally had to read LIAR'S CLUB and CHERRY. I'm glad I did, although my tortured journey toward adulthood began ten years earlier than Mary's and involved nine years in an orphanage. Not comparing; just giving my angle of orientation. To me anyone with parents is spoiled, but then I didn't have drugs to contend with. Still, we shared that "outsider" view and the search for self and struggle to escape the boundaries of our pre-adolescent Texas culture.For a nimble mind there is much to like here: frankness, delightful poetic phrasing and pulse, the drifting scope and focus of the author's camera, bright and intimate views from a thoroughly charming girl I'd like to have known when I was younger. CHERRY races along until the last two psychedelic chapters, which were tricky but instructive for this reader who's never done LSD or anything stronger than pot, leaving me with an unchanged disinterest in such chemical escapades. Still, those two herky-jerky chapters gave me a sense of what "tripping" was like and reminded me of Ken Kesey.Self-deprecating cultural insights pop up like Whac-a-moles, such as when Mary joins an older black laundry worker on her break. "Her being black so absolutely trumps most other forms of suffering that you feel proud to be treated as an ally. ...You bend over Drusilla's accordion wallet, straining to disguise the knee-jerk piety that comes at such moments from being white, which affords so much unspoken social ease. Surely you'll never be indentured to some packet of grand-babies staring out of yellowed plastic windows. Surely the world will land you in some more elegant circumstance, one that pays you extravagantly for your opinions and brilliant insights into the human condition."And later, during a drug fest at the beach: "What warms your countercultural heart about this fraternity is such total lack of judgment, for you all learned at home how to ignore the blatantly peculiar. How to let it ride. In this company, any eccentricity warrants sanction. That sense you feel in town of being some freak whom passersby have secretly bought tickets to gawk at--that just doesn't bubble up here."Another juicy quote: "You know that on this broad planet sympathetic others exist, at least a few beings somewhere who might feel alien as you. Books prove it--characters like old Holden Caulfield... . The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion."And another: "I stood there while his heavy-lashed eyes sealed themselves against me, and the fine tendons of his sockless feet resumed their post crossed in his loafers out the window."CHERRY is a more than worthy read for anyone drawn to the journey from puberty to adulthood, especially from a girl's perspective and more especially within the context of a small Texas town. (McMurtry, move over.) I found the issues important, the settings realistic and engaging, the characters and dialogue as well, especially Mary's parents, friends and boyfriends and that engaging judge who was her mother's admirer and rescued Mary from jail.Thanks Mary.
Take THAT Nabakov! So this is a follow up to the Liars Club, her memoir of growing up with a dysfunctional family in Texas. This time around, she focuses on her coming of age years with a fantastic precision and recollection. What I most admired about this book is the way you can see how a teenage girl can be bad and good, how she can be smart and yet naive, wild and yet sheltered all at the same time. Her stories about how her sexual emotions were budding was so very true to life- while she was having new feelings and registering new sensations in her body, she did not immediately conclude that intercourse was inevitable. In her mind, she envisioned more benign hugging and hand holding and kissing- ultimately more intimacy and connection that girls think of as love. What is so fascinating is that while she knew all that she needed and more than she wanted from her mother, she still didn't put that together with what she was desiring. She even mentions how Lolita was so wrong when she read it because it was so polar opposite to her experiences. And how it was clearly a man's forcing boy thoughts into a young girl's mind and his twisted interpretation. While she may have done things that could be concluded as being flirty, young girls many times do not understand how their seemingly innocent actions can be wildly interpreted.I related very much to this book- while I was a much better behaved girl in middle and high school when it came to authority, and my home live was more balanced (though dysfunctional in ways, I did have my drug and drinking period at the same time frame that she did and related a lot to the feelings of boredom and anxiety that wanting more gives a teenager. And I clearly remember being head over heels for my first boyfriend, as she was, and just never thinking that we needed to move any further than making out for hours. And, being devastated in how wrong I was when he broke up with me.I can't wait to pass this one on...
What do You think about Cherry (2015)?
This is a densely poetic read and every sentence takes time, or maybe I was just dazzled by them and took time to get inside them. This is a beautiful, open and deceptive book about a girl growing up in Texas, from puberty to leaving home in a van of surfers at 17. One of the absolute best coming-of-age stories I've read. How does Mary Karr write several pages on the feeling of her first kiss? The story is disjointed, unlike the build of Liar's Club and Lit, but it all adds up to a powerful memoir exploring one girl's soul, family, friendship, boyfriends, drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll.
—Ellen
As I delved into The Liar's Club, Mary Karr's first memoir, it occurred to me I had another of her books on the shelf. I couldn't remember much about Cherry, beyond its "sexual awakening" theme, but thought it would be interesting to read about Karr's teenage years just after reading about her childhood.Eh.The book stands alone, but it shouldn't. She mostly sets aside the horrors of her childhood to explore boys and drugs, relegating trauma (including hints about a rape when she was 8) to quick asides.Cherry purports to be a girl's take on growing up horny, but even that rings false. It's sort of about a lost girl trying to find herself, only we don't know how lost or how she could ever be found. It's not as revelatory as it is just plain sad.
—Lori
Mary continues her account of growing up in a stifling town, with drunken parents, particularly her mother whose grip on sane self-preservation is loosened periodically. Personally, I think Mary's three memoirs reach out to have a relationship with the reader, to engage witness to her efforts to come to terms with her history, her family, her ambitions and her frailties. Cherry is not Liars' Club but an older voice, one who weaves into adolescence and further love of language.I think some of the reviews of this particular installment are harsh and self-indulgent. And for those of you who don't finish Cherry, well, I found the next-to-last chapter, the telling of a distorted urban adventure, one of the most accurate and lyrical pieces I've ever read. But maybe you have to be of a certain age...
—Monya
