Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Cherry
    Unavailable
    Cherry
    Unavailable
    Cherry
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Cherry

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Mary Karr told the prize-winning tale of her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir. The Liar's Club rode the top of The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and publications ranging from The New Yorker to People picked it as one of the best books of the year. But it left people wondering: How'd that scrappy kid make it outta there? Cherry dares to tell that story. Karr picks up the trail and dashes off into her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom.

    In this long-awaited sequel, we see Karr ultimately trying to run from the thrills and terrors of her sexual awakwening by butting against authority in all its forms. She lands all too often in the principal's office and-in one instance-a jail cell. Looking for a lover or heart's companion who'll make her feel whole, she hooks up with an outrageous band of surfers and heads, wannabe yogis and bona fide geniuses.

    Karr's edgy, brilliant prose careens between hilarity and tragedy, and Cherry takes readers to a place never truly explored-deep inside a girl's stormy, ardent adolescence. Parts will leave you gasping with laughter. But its soaring close proves that from even the smokiest beginnings a solid self can form, one capable of facing down all manner of monsters.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 26, 2000
    ISBN9780375417498
    Unavailable
    Cherry

    Related to Cherry

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ten Essential Graphic Novels and Memoirs About Queer Women

      Apr 30, 2019

      Can't-miss books by Emil Ferris, Jamie Hernandez, Mariko Tamaki, and more. The post Ten Essential Graphic Novels and Memoirs About Queer Women appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 25, 2023

      The American Dream hangs heavy over that country. The idea that anyone, if they work hard, can achieve success has been shown over and over again to be a delusion, and modern American society is as far from a meritocracy as you can imagine. Fiction i

      3 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of An Ending

      May 14, 2019

      In Search Of An Ending
      6 min read

    • Article

      October Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Oct 1, 2018

      We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this mont

      6 min read

    • Article

      Make Summer Last Longer With The 10 Best Books Of August

      Aug 12, 2019

      The latest mystery from Louise Penny, a probing novel by Richard Russo, and Sarah M. Broom’s memoir of living in New Orleans, all made our list this month.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Whitehead, Marais, Szalay, Klosterman, and More

      Jul 16, 2019

      Colson Whitehead's latest, tales of minimum wage working hell, and new Chuck Klosterman headline the week's new releases. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Whitehead, Marais, Szalay, Klosterman, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Mar 3, 2022

      This month, we've got our eye on new books from the likes of Elaine Hsieh Chou, Sarah Moss, Matt Bell, and Elena Ferrante. The post March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Destiny O. Birdsong

      Dec 11, 2020

      In a year when I too am coming to terms with my body’s history and limits, its future and fearless strengths, each of these pieces gave me space to mourn and laugh, to honor and to plan. The post A Year in Reading: Destiny O. Birdsong appeared first

      4 min read

    • Article

      ...and These Were The Favourites Of Readers Around The Country

      Dec 18, 2023

      My favourite book this year is Lilith by @nikkimarmery. At once both accessible and mindblowing, you see the world differently once you’ve heard this story. @sarasheridan Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks will take your breath away. Crooks’ love for an

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘In The Country Of Women’ Is A Powerful American Memoir

      Aug 29, 2019

      Acclaimed writer Susan Straight shares a poignant and vivid reflection on her family’s journeys.

      3 min read

    • Article

      June Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Jun 2, 2021

      This June, we're tentatively removing our masks in public parks and curling up with new books from Kate Zambreno, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Lisa Taddeo, Kristen Arnett, Rivka Galchen, and Italo Calvino. The post June Preview: The Millions Most Anticipate

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: May-lee Chai

      Dec 13, 2018

      2018 was my year of reading for #resistance. I’m grateful that there were so many amazing books that nourished my soul in more ways than one—I needed artistry to give me beauty, I needed social consciousness to give me fire, and I needed the innovati

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Machado, Pico, Sexton, Tariq, Older, and More

      Nov 5, 2019

      New titles from the likes of Carmen Maria Machado, Tommy Pico, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, Malcolm Tariq, Daniel José Older, and more. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Machado, Pico, Sexton, Tariq, Older, and More appeared first on The Milli

      6 min read

    • Article

      June Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Jun 1, 2022

      We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this mont

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Edan Lepucki

      Dec 2, 2017

      The last couple of months or so, I’ve taken a break from the Internet—or as much as I’m able to. Writing this piece feels a bit like yelling to you from across an enormous canyon filled with photos of latte art and babies and feminist slogans etched

      3 min read

    • Article

      In 'Dead Queens Club,' Henry VIII Is The Homecoming King

      Feb 2, 2019

      Hannah Capin's zippy new young adult novel follows intrepid journalist Annie (she's from Cleveland so her pal Henry calls her Cleves) as she investigates the mystery of Henry's dead girlfriends.

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Reformatory' Tells A Story Of Ghosts, Abuse, Racism — And Sibling Love

      Nov 2, 2023

      Tananarive Due's haunting, unflinching novel delves deep into the realities of the Jim Crow South and the very real horrors that took place at Florida reformatory schools in the 1950s.

      3 min read

    Reviews for Cherry

    3.5/5

    254 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Re-read in preparation for the upcoming release of LIT.

      This second in Karr's series of memoirs covers her teen years in Texas, during which she wanders around stoned and poetical. She's about 10 years older than I am, and there is a lot of overlap in our respective memories. Her voice is pure and overcomes the at times awkward choice of second person narration. I do not become quite as immersed in this as I do in her earlier book, but I enjoy it mightily.
    • 2/5
      This memoir was well written but I found the first couple chapters were hard to get my attention. I prefer when a book can catch my mind in the first chapter. I have read her other book and found that one to be much better.
    • 3/5
      describing herself as a wild, smart and bored-to-bits teen in the seventies: a wild, smart and not at all boring book. it may help many a teen understand their parents, actually. good.
    • 4/5
      Though it pales in comparison with Karr's earlier memoir (Liar's Club), still a great read. She really captures the remembered voice of an imaginative girl at various ages. I confess, though, that after setting the book aside for a week 95% of the way through it, I had to force myself through the rest of it.
    • 3/5
      Mary Karr's second midlife memoir covers the years she spent as a teenager in a deary Texas refinery town and details her misadventures with drugs, sex, and the local hippie subculture. Karr's experiences aren't exactly unique, but she's still unflinchingly honest about her wildly dysfunctional family and is in a good position to witness a much-discussed generational shift. "Cherry" perfectly captures the moment when American youth culture tilted into drug-fueled hippie abandon. The prose in "Cherry" is, if anything, even better than the writing in "The Liars Club," and that's no mean feat. Karr gracefully and effortlessly imbues real-life events with novelistic significance, combining a reporter's commitment to detail with a novelist's interest in character. She's even good with topics that most writers misjudge badly: the psychedelic experience and the tricky terrain of female desire.The problems with "Cherry" might, sadly enough, originate in the book's subject. Karr was, by her own admission, a rather melodramatic and self-centered teen, and spending almost three hundred pages with the adolescent version of the author can grow tiresome. As her drug use grows more extreme towards the end of the book, you can sense a real psychic chasm open beneath her and I'm not sure that it gets fully resolved by the book's end. Like "The Bell Jar," "Cherry" is suffused with a sense of dread and confusion so strong that it might be contagious. One gets the sense that Karr's extremely lucky to be both alive and sane. She's a good writer, though, and, despite its problems, I'm glad that she lived long enough to produce this book.
    • 3/5
      As my first trip into Mary Carr's world, I was entranced and inspired. I can't wait to write my own memoir!Her prose was loaded and lush with wonderful metaphors and invoked her feelings, especially during that one chapter at Effie's. I was tripped the hell out!She did lose me during the acid trip chapters but the first two thirds of the book had me hooked.She's a great writer; I can't front. I only hope to be as awesome as she is.
    • 5/5
      I'm reading this now (just finished it). It's wonderful! Straight talk from an attractive and exasperating young woman-- the cultural references are spot on. Her memories of the trials-- the ones she experienced, and the ones she caused-- and cluelessness of adolescence are bravely and truthfully presented. Mary Karr is a delight to read.
    • 3/5
      I didn't like this nearly as much as Liar's Club. Although she maintains her wonderful style of writing, the book was disappointing and has none of the charm of her earlier work.
    • 3/5
      An honest, and interesting female memoir.