

In “The Liars’ Club” (1995), she wrote about her hardscrabble Texas upbringing, including her rape by a neighborhood boy and molestation by a babysitter in “Cherry” (2000), about her adolescent coming-of-age and in “Lit” (2009), about her adult recovery from alcoholism and embrace of Catholicism. Mary Karr has told three stories the world wanted to hear. Celebrities, addicts, abuse victims, politicians, soldiers, grieving children: Everyone has a story to tell and a conviction that the world wants to hear it - and often enough, if the best-seller lists are any indication, the world does.

The vogue for memoir, like all vogues, comes and goes. Tobias Wolff didn’t do much of anything to disturb his sleep, it would seem, but he still managed to turn his boyhood into beautiful, reflective music. Kathryn Harrison had sex with her father. Why not say what happened? All right, then: St.
