If you are a writer looking for a roadmap, there are other books that would better serve you. Karr is smart enough to avoid writing a book that has been written before. But if you are looking for a way in, a way to find your own truth and bring it to life on the page, Mary Karr has your back.
It is not, alas, a very good book. Repetitive, unorganized, unsure of its audience or tone, it can’t decide whether it wants to be a how-to guide or a work of critical analysis.
Karr, like Tobias Wolff, Mary McCarthy, and Frank Conroy, had great material and greater talents. The rest of us, the divas we may be, likely do not, and will not glean them from this book.
Compressing timelines? OK. Fabricating dialogue? OK. Inventing narrative-helping events? OK. The list is long enough to make you wonder if 'intention to deceive' really means 'dumb enough to get caught.'
