In this paperback of her long-awaited sequel, we find Karr once again trying to run from the thrills and terrors of her psychological and physical awakening by violently crashing up against authority in all its forms, shuttling between the principal’s office and the jail cell. Yearning, like a typical teenager, for the ideal love or heart’s companion who will make her feel whole again, she throws in her lot with an varied and outrageous band; surfers, yogis, bona fide geniuses.

Karr’s edgy, brilliant prose careens between hilarity and tragedy. Although there are other memoirs that pay close attention to the process of self-creation and destruction that young girls go through, with all its accompanying anguish, self-consciousness and inertia, there is no one who writes about it like Mary Karr. Her prose is lustrous and cinematic, her humour earthy and irresistible. And the dramas and happenings of her life are of an intensity that few others ever experience.