Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Liars' Club : A Memoir

The Liars' Club : A Memoir
caffeinegirl avatar reviewed on + 114 more book reviews


I was hoping it would be as good as Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle, but it wasn't. Karr did a terrific job of remembering her childhood, and she has more details about her life in the first chapter than I could remember from my entire childhood. I'm impressed that she recalled (and researched) so much.

The book is called "The Liars' Club" because that's what the group of friends that her father knew called themselves, so I was expecting some revelation about her father or his friends. In the end, I don't think Karr understood her parents -- which is understandable, given their craziness. But if she couldn't understand what makes them tick, I wish she had written more about what their craziness meant to her in her understanding of herself. I came away thinking that this book was an interesting series of events, but not much in the way of analysis. It didn't satisfy me.