Lit: A Memoir

New York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Christian Science Monitor • Slate • St. Louise Post-Dispatch • Cleveland Plain Dealer • Seattle Times • NBCC Award Finalist

Mary Karr’s unforgettable sequel to her beloved and bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry "lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).

Lit is a riveting story of addiction and recovery about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, this literary memoir is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.

The Boston Globe calls Lit a book that "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." The New York Times Book Review calls it "a master class on the art of the memoir" and Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is "the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."

A landmark memoir about motherhood, faith, and the writer’s life, Lit explores:

• Journey to Sobriety: From drunken nights on a back porch to the church basement meeting that changes everything, Karr chronicles her escape from alcoholism with unflinching candor.
• Memoir about Motherhood: The story of becoming a mother by letting go of a mother—a powerful look at breaking the cycle of family dysfunction and finding a new way to love.
• A Writer’s Life: A poet’s transformation, this is a master class on how learning to live—and get sober—is essential to learning how to write.
• Finding Faith: The raw, unexpected, and often hilarious story of a reluctant convert finding her way from the Ivy League to a Catholic church, discovering a spiritual life she never thought possible.