Sunday 4 July 2010

Cherry

"No road offers more mystery than that first one you mount from the town you were born to, the first time you mount it of your own volition, on a trip funded by your own coffee tin of wrinkled up dollar-bills you've saved and scrounged for, worked the all-night switchboard for, missed the Rolling Stones for, sold fragrant pot with smashed flowers going brown inside twist-tie plastic baggies for. In fact, to disembark from your origins, you've done everything you can think to scrounge money save selling your spanking young pussy."

Mary Karr, Cherry. That's the way to start a book. And it gets better. Buy it, read it, just read it. I keep telling people it's the best book in the world but do they listen? And read the Liars' Club whilst you're at it.

(I'm not giving this away, oh no, I leant my copy out and never got it back, now I've just found a copy in a junk shop I'm never giving it away again. I put this post up for all those poor cheated people who turn up here in search of something about books.)

Update - she had a new book of memoirs out last year. Nobody told me!

4 comments:

  1. That's a sensational opening paragraph. Thanks for the tip though I urge you to give everything away or you never own the books because they start to own you.

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  2. Jolly good, that's going on the list. In return, this.

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  3. Hi Charles. It's great hey? The end paragraph is also magnificent, and the middle bit. I'm trying but I do get attached to some of them.

    Tim, it's only a little bit rude in places - it's about growing up, losing your virginity,rites of passage, nothing new, but it's just all about the quality of the writing. If you described it (biography of a young Texan girl growing up to be a poet) it sounds very girly & flowery, but she's such a powerful writer it knocks your socks off. She writes about sex & sexuality from a girl's point of view brilliantly.

    Thanks Emordino - I had heard of this & meant to read it, looks like my cup of tea.

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