I just finished reading Mary Karr's memoir, The Liar's Club. It's a vivid account of a young girl growing up in rural Texas amid a chaotic family life- the mother becomes psychotic, both parents drink incessantly, a vindictive grandmother moves in with the family, tearing it apart, while slowly and grotesquely succumbing to cancer.
Karr's most impressive feat is her ability to recall events in such detail. Her "long memory," as termed by her father, aids in the creation of a tableau of her gradeschool years. The events unfold animated by the desire, desperation, fearlessness, and undying belief of a child, while a subtle maturity underpins the scenes. Karr's mother, Charlie, never comes across as a psychotic, irresponsible, termagant woman, undeserving of her children's love, even though Karr would have every right to recount her childhood with anger and animosity. Instead, Karr represents her mother with both the unyeilding love of a child and the sympathetic compassion of an adult.
The memoir proves Karr's inheritance of her father's story telling abilities, which she dileneates by depicting his participation in the Liar's club (from which the book derives its name.) He captivates his friends with the deft control of a raconteur while they sit around the table drinking whiskey. Karr sights that her father made up quite a few stories - he tells his friends one about her grandfather's suicide even though he is still very much alive in a nearby Texas town. The details lend believability to it all - how the father died wearing a hat, how he followed his father up the roof until he could make out his father's britches, how his father's body fell through the roof, only to be left hanging by his head.
Karr admits in a 1997 Salon.com interview that she made up the stories that her father tells in the book, but the acknowledgment of her embellishment doesn't come as too much of a surprise. The book's eponymous title, The Liar's Club, hints that some of the details contained within may be fudged, that when memory becomes hazy, Karr fills in the gaps to give her story pellucidity. The result is a delectable, moving memoir that's difficult to put down.
1:27:07 AM 
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