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Rat Girl: A Memoir (Paperback)
$15.00
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Description
In 1985, Kristin Hersh was just beginning to find her place in the world. After beginning her music career at the age of fourteen, the precocious child of unconventional hippies was enrolled in college while her band, Throwing Muses, was getting off the ground, amid buzzing rumors of a major label deal.
Then, everything changed. Her emotional troubles were diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and - just after the band was signed - Hersh was processing news of a very different sort: she was pregnant. Suddenly, she found herself wondering whether antidepressants could be mixed with prenatal vitamins, how to balance a guitar on her swollen stomach, and whether a rock band could tour with an infant.
Written in beautifully evocative prose, and filled with unforgettable characters, Rat Girl is the story of one pivotal year in Hersh's extraordinary life, a year that taught her strength and forced her to grow up much faster than she'd planned.
About the Author
Kristin Hersh has released more than twenty albums over the course of her career which have sold more than one million copies worldwide. She records solo, as well as with her bands Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave.
Praise for Rat Girl: A Memoir…
"Rat Girl is the story of a wide-eyed soul coming to maturity in the ridiculous cacophony of modern life. Although it is supposedly about what we call, for lack of a better term, ''manic depression,'' it has nearly no interest in such grim diagnostic thinking. It is instead awestruck - by music, feeling, perception, wild animals, mystery, dreams, ''the gorgeous and terrible things that live in your house.'' It is an original beauty."
-Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica and Don''t Cry
"Funny, freaky, fidgety, Hersh''s memoir is the book a fan didn''t dare hope for: a beacon in a dark field, illuminating the mysterious and the mundane. Beautifully, honestly, written and as close as you will ever get to being in a Throwing Muses song."
-Wesley Stace, author of Misfortune and By George
"Ultra-vivid writing and intense honesty is what you''d expect from Kristin Hersh, one of America''s finest songwriters. But Rat Girl is also a startlingly funny and touching memoir of her mid-Eighties moment as the bi- polar, pregnant, intermittently homeless frontwoman of a rising indie-rock band. It''s a gripping journey into mental chaos and out the other side."
-Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84
