My father comes into focus for me on a Liars` Club afternoon. He sits at a wobbly card table weighed down by a bottle. Even now the scene seems so real to me that I can`t but write it in the present tense.

Mary Karr grew up in a swampy East Texas refinery town in a volatile and defiantly loving family. In this funny, devastating, haunting memoir and with a raw and often painful honesty, she looks back at life with a painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip over into psychosis, and a hard-drinking, fist-swinging father who liked nothing better than to spin tales with his cronies at the Liars` Club.

When it was published in 1995, The Liars` Club raised the art of memoir to a new level and brought about a dramatic revival of the form. It is a classic that paints a harsh world redeemed by Karr`s warmth, intelligent humour and finely spun prose; The Liars` Club is both heart-stopping and heart-felt.