Mary Karr, LIT

Unlike BOSSYPANTS (see previous blog entry), I did NOT read this memoir in two hours on the plane ride home. It is a brilliant, poetic, and at times harrowing account of Karr's early adulthood, post-college, marriage, first five years of motherhood, and years of drinking and getting sober (several times over). "Lit" in the title means both "literature" and "drunk," and the two categories of experience are profoundly intertwined. I'd put this in my top 5 for this year so far. I liked it better than Glass Castle or Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight or Dry--and I loved all those.