In the sequel to her marvelous memoir of a difficult childhood in east Texas, _The Liars' Club_, Karr describes her teens in Leechfield in the early 1960s. Her mother, fresh from a stint in a mental hospital, teaches the ladies painting and doesn't much sweat the small stuff (including anything her daughter might be up to), her father is a good-time guy who clearly doesn't understand her, and her older sister does her best to fit in with the crowd and pretend she's not a member of this dysfunctional family. There are friends, boyfriends, drugs, and a few run-ins with the law. But mostly, it's Karr's crystalline evocation of teenage womanhood, with all its fears, desires, and little triumphs, that make this as compulsively readable as its predecessor.
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The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
