Cherry: A Memoir
by Mary Karr
Date Reviewed: April 25, 2000
I just absolutely adore Mary Karr’s prose. I haven’t ever read her poetry, mostly because I don’t care for poetry, but I like her prose enough that I may take a look. Cherry is the second of the author’s autobiographies. The first, The Liar’s Club, covered her life through about the end of elementary school. Cherry picks up where the first book left off, and progresses through high school. The period is the end of the 60’s and the beginning of the 70’s, so there’s a lot of elicit drug use and experimentation with hallucinogens, but not as much experimentation with sex as would characterize a similar book “set” in the same area (southeastern Texas) in the 90’s, I think. It’s a coming-of-womanhood story, without as much self-consciousness as in other similar books I’ve read. It’s told with the self-deprecating tone that has become Karr’s hallmark, and that belies the experience and hindsight of a woman in her 40’s looking back at her teens. A very interesting, telling read.
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