Elizabeth Foy Larsen
Mary Karr has never lacked for material. But she’s always delivered on the craft side, too, with her poet’s gift for show-and-tell.
Beth Greenfield
[Karr] continues to delight with her signature dark humor and pitch-perfect metaphors delivering large doses of wit and painful insights. . . . There are plenty of memoirs about being drunk, but this one has Karr’s voice-both sure-footed and breezy-behind it.
Steve Ross
With this third book Karr has managed to raise the bar higher still on the genre of memoir.
Valery Sayers
Karr’s sharp and funny sensibility won me over to her previous two volumes, but what wins me over to Lit is the way her acute self-awareness conquers any hint that hers is the only version of this story…. Karr is as funny as ever.
Commonweal
Lit matches its predecessors in candor and outstrips them in insight.
Michelle Green
Karr movingly depicts her halting journey into AA, making it clear her grit and spirit remain intact.
Bob Minzesheimer
A redemptive, painfully funny story.
Carmela Ciuraru
There isn’t a single false note in Lit.
Ken Tucker
[A] radiant, rueful, rip-roaring book. . . .Warm enough to burn a hole in your heart.
Rebecca Steinitz
Dazzling. . . . Lit reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art.
Melanie Gideon
As irresistible as it is unflinchingly honest. . . . With grace, saltiness and profanity galore, Karr undeniably re-establishes herself as one of our finest memoirists and storytellers.
Susan Cheever
In a gravelly, ground-glass-under-your-heel voice that can take you from laughter to awe in a few sentences, Karr has written the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years.
Samantha Dunn
Karr could tell you what’s on her grocery list, and its humor would make you bust a gut, its unexpected insights would make you think and her pitch-perfect command of our American vernacular might even take your breath away…. [Karr] holds the position of grande dame memoirista.
Michiko Kakutani
Searing. . . . A book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go. . . . Chronicles with searching intelligence, humor and grace the author’s slow, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes painful discovery of her vocation and her voice as a poet and writer.
Body + Soul
Mary Karr sparked a memoir revival with The Liars’ Club—now she’s back with Lit to describe how she turned those early troubles into literary gold.
Redbook Magazine
Riveting.
Glamour
A brutally honest, sparkling story.
Vanity Fair
Mary Karr restores memoir form’s dignity with Lit.
Pam Houston
Scrappy, gut-wrenching. . . . Irresistible. . . . [Written] with trademark wit, precision, and unfailing courage.