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Rat Girl A Memoir Kristin Hersh 9780143117391 Books

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Rat Girl A Memoir Kristin Hersh 9780143117391 Books

Perhaps I'm a tad biased in my favorable-leaning review, as I've been a long-time fan of Kristin Hersh and her band, Throwing Muses. The alt-rock outfit spent their formative years in my hometown of Boston (formed in Newport, RI) and I've paid a great deal of attention to Kristin's career along the way, as well as her stepsister, Tanya Donelly (of Throwing Muses and later, the band Belly) who also plays a significant role in this memoir. If I were to dive blindly into this book with little to no knowledge of the subjects, I'd still find this memoir to be widely entertaining, humorous, provocative and informative. Stylistically, it's penned in an easily accessible manner, so it's a quick read. The author paints a vivid landscape of the period in time in which the band staggered through their humble beginnings and offers up the various "OMG, No Way, LOL and I can't believe it," moments as the story rolls along. One of the best---most unique music memoirs out there!


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Rat Girl A Memoir Kristin Hersh 9780143117391 Books Reviews

A friend of mine once pointed out to me that famous people write autobiographies. The rest of us write novels. That has always seemed to me to be true, and singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh's astonishing "Rat Girl," the story of a year in her life taken from her diary, would seem to prove my friend's point.

In her introduction, Ms. Hersh puts some distance between herself, the diary, and her readers by noting that she wrote "this _book_ based on _pages from my diary_ because copying down a year isn't a particularly creative thing to do. And it all happened twenty-five years ago, so it can't really count as a story about _me_--that girl isn't me any more. Now it's just a story."

And quite a story it is. It begins in the spring of 1985 when her band, the Throwing Muses (if you don't know of them, I can't imagine why you're reading this review), were playing bars in Lovecraftland and Ms. Hersh was 18. We meet her first in a crashpad, and are soon introduced to the other members of that amazingly creative and intelligent band, along with her friend Betty Hutton (who was herself famous long ago), her hippie father (a professor at a Catholic College in Providence), and then her gay friend Mark.

It continues on through the seasons, ending the following spring with the birth of her son (the child's father never appears in the memoir). It's funny at times (the head of the record company that signs the Muses is portrayed here as if he belongs in a Monty Python skit), suspenseful at others (a stalker appears sporadically), and parts may tug at your heart (Ms. Hersh's difficulty in keeping anything down during he first trimester; Betty Hutton's attempts to avoid being recognized, which is easier than she thinks because nobody has any idea who she is, or rather was).

Throughout, Ms. Hersh sprinkles in lyrics from the Throwing Muses years, along with some from her equally brilliant solo albums (among them "Hips and Makers," "Strange Angels," "Sky Motel," and "Sunny Border Blue"). And she sprinkles in as chapter-enders flashbacks to her childhood.

As a writer, she's quite the stylist Her prose is in that same deadpan no-words-wasted style that imbues her song lyrics. (In my head, I imagined her reading the book aloud, in that raspy nails-on-a-blackboard voice.)

It's dazzling.
This memoir is magnificent. Thank God.

When an artist you like branches out into a field that's new--an actor rapping, say, or a musician writing books, you kind of follow along with a bit of trepidation. It seems polite to be part of the audience, but quite often these divergences are more embarrassing than anything else. I love memoirs, and I have long loved Kristin Hersh. I wasn't sure they would mix.

They do.

This memoir covers Kristin's late adolescence. Throwing Muses is already a band, not yet successful, struggling to define its place just as Kristin is struggling to define her own, coming to grips with the mood disorder that shook her life. She leaves out many details, but none of the ones that matter. This is a memoir, after all (literally, mémoire, memory), and not an autobiography. This is not about the hardcore facts, but about what she perceives, remembers, prioritizes in her past. It leaves us less informed than an autobiography, but more involved. We feel a part of her daily life.

There's a fine sense of pacing here. Most of the memoir is lineal, but interspersed are small snippets of song lyrics and short passages from other times, distinguished by a different typeface. Together, they give a more complete picture of the author--the song lyrics offer another view of how she filters her experience into her art; the "flashbacks" a hint into the earlier passages of the person she is becoming. But she does not allow them to derail the primary thread of her story.

I found that story utterly engrossing. Kristin neither romanticizes nor catastrophizes her life and the challenges she faces. She delicately skirts some of the darker issues, but remains true to the emotional core. Kristin's authorial voice is as distinctive as her singing voice; her gifts as a lyricist could not guarantee her ability to sustain this form, but she does it ably.

This book should appeals to fans of either art form--memoirs, music. It doesn't matter, I don't think, whether you are already familiar with Kristin's work as a solo artist or as singer for Throwing Muses or 50 Foot Wave. It is a deeply satisfying, emotionally resonant book that should appeal whether you know her or not. I recommend.

Tip of the hat to the cover illustration by Gilbert Hernandez (Love & Rockets and others), who has previously done cover art for Throwing Muses.
Perhaps I'm a tad biased in my favorable-leaning review, as I've been a long-time fan of Kristin Hersh and her band, Throwing Muses. The alt-rock outfit spent their formative years in my hometown of Boston (formed in Newport, RI) and I've paid a great deal of attention to Kristin's career along the way, as well as her stepsister, Tanya Donelly (of Throwing Muses and later, the band Belly) who also plays a significant role in this memoir. If I were to dive blindly into this book with little to no knowledge of the subjects, I'd still find this memoir to be widely entertaining, humorous, provocative and informative. Stylistically, it's penned in an easily accessible manner, so it's a quick read. The author paints a vivid landscape of the period in time in which the band staggered through their humble beginnings and offers up the various "OMG, No Way, LOL and I can't believe it," moments as the story rolls along. One of the best---most unique music memoirs out there!