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Lit

a Memoir
FindingJane
Dec 10, 2015FindingJane rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Alternately harrowing, sad and funny, Ms. Karr’s description of her journey from alcoholism to sobriety and a fresh start on her life is a scintillating memoir. Her use of language is startling, original and an absolute delight to read. She has a way with metaphor and simile that shows her as the mature writer she has become. At times, you wonder why she was so self-deprecating about her own work. But, like a lot of famous artists, her drinking both informed her writing and threatened to derail her life. Her details about the steps she took—therapy, pills, self-help groups, charity work, religion and divorce (which her husband seemed to find more shameful than her drinking)—are intricate, revealing the gradual pathways she took to pull herself from the mire. However, as a confirmed agnostic, I found the pressure from people around her to pray or seek God for guidance or aid to be unnerving and irritating. (No doubt her friends would state this is more a reflection of my mindset than about God.) The harassment to pray was gentle but nonetheless constant, a wearing down of her resistance, at a time when she had little inner strength to fight it. The passages about how she was apt to drop to her knees in unlikely places made me cringe and reiterated my private notions about how prayer and religion are often the last bastion of the impoverished, needy or desperate. Still, you are moved by her devotion, her undoubted intelligence and the inner fortitude she gains through prayer and the search for meaning in her life. What ultimately earns this book its high stars are her reconnection with family, her wish to make amends or get in touch with her distant father, her enraged, crazed mother and her reliable but seemingly cool-tempered sister. Prayer aside, this is a gripping record of one woman’s journey through fire and coming out the other side triumphant.