Nutgraf

Well, as I thought, Karr totally delivered. Her straightforward, bulldozer style takes no prisoners, but don’t let it fool you – she earned all of those grants and awards, as well as every contract of piece of praise she ever received. This book is brash, and powerful and beautiful and rich at the same time. It’s unvarnished artistry.

Her journey through marriage, alcoholism, and motherhood, as well as her struggle with her family, her past, not to mention her present and the rent and her recovery are written without a trace of self pity. Well, a couple of traces, but delivered with a self-conscious eye-rolling that makes it okay. She tells it because it’s true, not because she’s trying to convince you that it’s right or good.

And her descriptions are incredible. Not a cliche in the bunch. For example:

“He’s dead. They nailed him in a box, and a long conveyor belt rolled him into a flaming oven even before my plane scraped down.”

Scraped down. Isn’t that gorgeous? It could have been an overwrought tearjerker of a moment, but she went for the raw, jagged, metallic side of grief.

Overall, this book has a lot more resolution in it than I was expecting. And a pretty in-depth exploration of her spiritual growth. I’m happy for her, really. And it’s great to watch some of her hard work (on the job and on herself) start to show rewards. But I think this takes us rather closer to her present state at the time of writing than any of her other memoirs have. That proximity may have to do with the semi-furnished feeling I got from the later chapters.

That said – loved it. She’s pretty awesome.

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