SOURCE: Marlantes, Liz. “Youngest Member of Liars' Club Keeps Telling Truth.” Christian Science Monitor 92, no. 225 (12 October 2000): 20.

In the following review, Marlantes argues that Cherry both captures and mirrors adolescence perfectly through its portrayal of boredom, loneliness, and self-consciousness.

Adolescence is an ambiguous stage of life. Less free and innocent than childhood, less settled and secure than adulthood, it hangs between in a kind of limbo. Cherry, Mary Karr's second memoir, not only captures this neither-here-nor-there phase perfectly, it mirrors it. The book itself seems to serve as a transition piece between The Liars' Club, her wonderfully funny and searing account of early childhood, and some future, as yet unwritten, work.

Cherry picks up where The Liars' Club left off when Karr is 11. We meet the same scrappy, uninhibited little girl from the previous book. She asks Violet Durkey point-blank why she was not invited to her sleepover party...