About this item
Lit follows Mary Karrs descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madnessand her astonishing resurrection. Karrs longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she cant outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in The Mental Marriott awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober becoming a mother by letting go of a mother learning to write by learning to live. It is a truly electrifying story of how to grow upas only Mary Karr can tell it. ,
About the Author
Mary Karr's first memoir, The Liar's Club, kick-started a memoir revolution and won nonfiction prizes from PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters. Also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, it rode high on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year, becoming an annual "best book" there and for The New Yorker, People, and Time. Recently Entertainment Weekly rated it number four in the top one hundred books of the past twenty-five years. Her second memoir, Cherry, which was excerpted in The New Yorker, also hit bestseller and "notable book" lists at the New York Times and dozens of other papers nationwide. Her most recent book in this autobiographical series, Lit: A Memoir, is the story of her alcoholism, recovery, and conversion to Catholicism. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. Other grants include the Whiting Award and Radcliffe's Bunting Fellowship. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
