Rat Girl

May 17, 2010 lola rated it 5 of 5 stars

i'm so fucking excited. i gave the quote that opens this book so i'm allowed to name drop that she's my awesome mother in law, right?

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Oct 25, 2010 Noah rated it 5 of 5 stars

In 1984 was supposed to go see Duran Duran play on the Seven and The Ragged Tiger tour with a group of my friends, but at the last minute my parents wouldn't let me go. So the first rock show I went to without parental supervision was in high school in 1989. I was seventeen and the club was eighteen and over only. I was a hopelessly good kid that didn't care about drinking (and never owned a fake ID), but I altered my driver’s license so that it looked like I was a year older just so I could see...more In 1984 was supposed to go see Duran Duran play on the Seven and The Ragged Tiger tour with a group of my friends, but at the last minute my parents wouldn't let me go. So the first rock show I went to without parental supervision was in high school in 1989. I was seventeen and the club was eighteen and over only. I was a hopelessly good kid that didn't care about drinking (and never owned a fake ID), but I altered my driver’s license so that it looked like I was a year older just so I could see Throwing Muses play live.

I had become obsessed with them after hearing a track on the Lonely Is An Eyesore compilation put out by 4AD records. This weird jangly "alternative" rock with obtuse lyrics drilled into my head and I played their records endlessly and memorized and sang the words I didn't understand, but felt moved by nonetheless.

I went by myself and was scared to talk to the other people in the club, who I was certain would know I was underage. Still I made my way to the front of the stage and was transfixed by this spooky singer who apologized for the fact that she stared into the distance throughout her set. I managed to grab the set list and then waited outside watching the band load out and wishing I had the guts to go up to talk to them. If I had, perhaps I would've gotten a glimpse of the postscript to the amazing year described in lead singer Kristin Hersh's new memoir Rat Girl.

The book is a swirling, moving and deeply personal story of four seasons of dramatic transformation between 1985 and 1986. Hersh's beautifully told tale is unique and fantastic, yet should resonate deeply to anyone who lived through their confusing teenage years trying to make sense of a world that didn't seem made for them.

I tore through this gem of a book and can't recommend it enough. Even if you've never heard the music of Kristin or the Muses, you will enjoy this extraordinary, touching memoir. But if you are already a fan, this is necessary reading and throws the songs into such amazing dimension that you will never be able to listen to them the same way again.

I’m jealous of the folks who will be discovering her amazing music for the first time through this book (and I hope there will be many), but I am happy to say “Throwing Muses” whenever I’m asked about the first show I went to by myself.

Be sure to get this book soon as readers in the first year of publication are given access to live recordings of the songs mentioned throughout.

Also be sure to check out Kristin’s recent solo music and new Throwing Muses recordings, much of which is available for free/pay-what-you-like here: http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/

p.s. Kristin is offering to talk to book clubs that choose to read Rat Girl. My book club had her call in and it was an amazing experience. She is such a wonderfully kind and giving artist and everyone was moved by the additional perspective she gave us on the book and her life. If you're interested you can get in touch with her through Twitter: @KristinHersh(less)

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Dec 13, 2010 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Only a tad bit past the Introduction - and what's this? - I want to write a "progress" review already just b/c it hits home already! I wasn't in a band - I was just a f**ked up artist teenager in the middle of a life that just kept getting stranger, sadder, funnier, more ironic (in the dictionary senses of the word), and oddly enough, I became stronger and more compassionate despite the deep-seated disgust and hate flowing through my being at that time. There's only so long after leaving home wh...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Julie Barrett rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs, finished-2012

Picked this up because I am working through Rolling Stone's list of the best rock memoirs. I like Throwing Muses and haven't read many female musicians memoirs so I went into this thinking it'd be a good book. Hmmmm. I read the intro where Kristin says this isn't a memoir per se but a novel based on her diary from when she was 19. Ok, well obviously every memoir written is not 100% true unless the person has been walking around their whole life tape recording conversations and has a photographic...more Picked this up because I am working through Rolling Stone's list of the best rock memoirs. I like Throwing Muses and haven't read many female musicians memoirs so I went into this thinking it'd be a good book. Hmmmm. I read the intro where Kristin says this isn't a memoir per se but a novel based on her diary from when she was 19. Ok, well obviously every memoir written is not 100% true unless the person has been walking around their whole life tape recording conversations and has a photographic memory. But to start off the memoir by saying it's based on her life & not actually about her life - it was off putting.

I have read easily 2 dozen memoirs/biographies of musicians and Rat Girl is in a class of it's own. Which is good and bad. The good part was how she wrote about music and song writing and performing. I enjoyed learning the tidbit that she liked performing with her contacts off so she couldn't see the audience. And as soon as she wrote about the colors she saw when playing or listening to music, I was thrilled. I saw a documentary a while ago that had a segment on synesthesia - a neurological condition where the person sees colors in music or letters or numbers. I found it fascinating to read about how she perceived music. Just really amazing. She goes into great detail about the colors of music. She also wrote a lot about her music hallucinations. That she did not write songs but merely recorded what she saw & heard outside of herself. It was not a surprise to me when she was diagnosed as bi-polar.

I read Patty Duke's memoir earlier this year. Patty also is bi-polar and wrote about having it but in a very, very, very different way than Kristin. Maybe because Patty is twenty years older than Kristin & was writing a traditional memoir wherein a person looks back upon their life and talks about it from almost a third person perspective. Rat Girl is written in the first person here & now. Patty wrote she had manic episodes & summarized what she did & how people reacted to her. Kristin shows the manic episodes from within. There is no omniscent narrative looking at the mania from the outside. I found it hard to read about and relate to Kristin but also found it eye-opening and educational to get a perspective like that. At times I felt like I was reading parts of Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury or perhaps Burrough's Junkie or Joyce's Ulysses. Not easy reading but worthwhile reading.

What bugged me the most about the book was how vague & opaque it was. Her lack of detail drove anal-retentive OCD me insane. There was not an easily followed timeline. Things and people were introduced in the storyline but not explained and then suddenly dropped. I got no sense of Kristin's family or homelife or friends or lovers. The book was incredibly internal. Which may be her point? That her mental illness consumed her and made her incredibly self-focused to the detriment of relations with other people? Still, I wondered how did she pay for her apartment in Boston? She mentions at the beginning of the book how poorly the band was paid. When & why did she stop living with her parents? Why weren't they more concerned about her being homeless for a while? Or were they?

Most importantly, where the hell did that pregnancy come from??? Was it an immaculate conception? She writes absolutely zero about anything sexual and then suddenly she is pregnant? WTF. Again, it made me think of Patty Duke's memoir. Patty got pregnant during a manic episode and did not know who the father was. Promiscuity was part of Patty's manic episodes. I found it hard to imagine that was the case with little ol' asexual Kristin who describes herself several times as looking like a 13 year old who wears grandma clothes. Luckily Professor Google came to the rescue. I googled Kristin & discovered she lost custody of her oldest son when he was 3 during a bitter custody battle. WHAT? Why would a one-night stand(which is what Kristin's memoir implies) want custody? More Professor Google. Turns out the father was her long time boyfriend of several years. WHA????? This info made me very cynical towards the second half of the book when she was pregnant. I kept wondering why she left out the father of her baby. Her boyfriend. Was it revenge? Was it her fantasy of how she wished the pregnancy to have been? Who knows? All I know is that it negatively impacted my impression of her. Judges don't willy nilly hand over a child's custody to the father unless the father is involved in the kid's life. That whole section of the book left a bad taste in my mouth. And don't even get me started on choosing to keep the baby in that situation and not choose abortion or adoption. I don't get it.

I wish the book had focused only on her music. Those were by far the best parts of the book, the parts about her creativity and her performances and recording their first album. All other musicians memoirs that I have read focus on two things - either the "sex,drugs & rocknroll" lifestyle that the musician lives in an attempt to be like Keith Richards or Jimmy Page or the focus is on the business aspect of music. The contracts & money & touring & gold records & awards. There will be a bit about actually composing & playing music, but not much. What made Rat Girl so amazing was how her primary focus was on the art of music, the creation of music. It was a wonderful insight into the mind of a musician.(less)

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Sep 04, 2012 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: its-only-rock-n-roll, bio

I’ve been trying for some time to write a decent review of Rat Girl: A Memoir, but not very successfully. As has been noted elsewhere on GR by myself and others, the books you really love are the hardest to review. Therefore, although I cannot do this quirky and delightful work justice, the following brief remarks will have to suffice.

As a rule, I am very stingy with my 5-star reviews. I usually reserve them for works of exceptional technical skill, genius-level mastery of the narrative form or...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Chip rated it 5 of 5 stars

Vividly written, heroically composed in its accounts of chaos, blunt and unsentimental when confronting the series of personal disasters that accompanied the band’s emergence, Rat Girl is great coming-of-age story. But as with Throwing Muses, so with this book: the high quality of the work isn’t in question so much as whether the work will find its ideal audience.

Boston has long been an incubator for high-profile rock and roll, and Throwing Muses was just one among many bands that came out of B...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Caitlin Constantine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Maybe the best thing I can say about this book is that I really, really want to listen to a lot of Throwing Muses after reading it. There are a few songs by the band that I like - particularly "Shimmer" - and I also really like Kristin Hersh's solo stuff, but knowing more about Hersh's creative process has made me listen to the songs in a whole new way.

While I was reading, it occurred to me that Hersh would make a great subject of an Oliver Sacks piece. Here we've got a woman who has had a head...more Maybe the best thing I can say about this book is that I really, really want to listen to a lot of Throwing Muses after reading it. There are a few songs by the band that I like - particularly "Shimmer" - and I also really like Kristin Hersh's solo stuff, but knowing more about Hersh's creative process has made me listen to the songs in a whole new way.

While I was reading, it occurred to me that Hersh would make a great subject of an Oliver Sacks piece. Here we've got a woman who has had a head injury, who is bipolar AND who is a synesthete (which means, in her case, that her brain associates sounds with colors), and she takes all of these things and uses them to create some really beautiful music.

But the book is about more than just her creative process. She writes beautifully about what it's like to have a diagnosable mental illness, particularly what it feels like to think that everything that makes up YOU is really just a side effect of your brain's chemical malfunctions. She writes about being a young female musician in a time (mid-1980s) and a place (New England) and working in a genre of music (crazy-ass pop-alternative rock) when all of these things were not exactly embraced. She writes about becoming pregnant and choosing to keep the baby. She writes about her friendship with an aging Hollywood actress, who is both like her and not like her in every way possible. It's a huge amount of material to cover in such a slim book but she does it.

What I liked best about the book, though, was Hersh's voice. She conveys her wide-eyed fascination with the world and all of the ugly-beauty inherent in everything it has to offer. Sometimes that kind of willful innocence can feel forced but I didn't get that from reading this book. Instead I just felt privileged that I got to spend a couple hundred pages inside the mind of such a gifted woman, and blessed that the world is capable of producing someone like her.

Recommended for anyone with an interesting in music, in memoir, in mental illness or in reading a lovely little book.(less)

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Oct 25, 2010 Irene Ziegler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

In Which Kristen Hersh Calls Our Book Club and is Dark and Blue and Sweet:

I'd never heard of Kristin Hersh, or her art rock band,Throwing Muses, which she formed at age 14. I know, I know, I'm about as hip as a walker. My Book and Cake Club picked her memoir, Rat Girl as our October read. (BTW, if you don't belong to a book club where everyone brings cake, you're in the wrong book club.) Hersh's email address is printed in the back of her book, so Noah Scalin emailed and asked her if she'd like...more In Which Kristen Hersh Calls Our Book Club and is Dark and Blue and Sweet:

I'd never heard of Kristin Hersh, or her art rock band,Throwing Muses, which she formed at age 14. I know, I know, I'm about as hip as a walker. My Book and Cake Club picked her memoir, Rat Girl as our October read. (BTW, if you don't belong to a book club where everyone brings cake, you're in the wrong book club.) Hersh's email address is printed in the back of her book, so Noah Scalin emailed and asked her if she'd like to "attend." Noah has been a fan for a long time; he saw her band play at a club in Richmond when he was too young to be there. I imagine that struck a chord (no pun intended) with Kristin, who for six years was too young herself to be in the clubs she played. She answered Noah right away and said sure. We met on Oct. 24, and Kristin Hersh participated via speakerphone.

I love people who love to laugh, and Kristin loves to laugh. Notoriously shy, she commented on her recent experiences at "literary events," where people often ask her very personal questions. "I go with it," she said, but as she says in the introduction, "I'm not interested in self-expression—I don’t want people to listen to my songs so that they’ll care about me.” And I don't think she wrote this book so people would care about her, either. Rather, she has shared with bone white honesty what is was like to be 18, freakishly talented and walking a line between sanity and stability, adventure and responsibility, ambition and integrity, music and motherhood.

Initially approached by a ghost writer who apparently felt comfortable enough to suggest that he "move in" as part of his research, Kristin stopped returning his calls and decided to write her story herself, using her 1985 diary as the starting point. "I kept a diary because someone told me I should," she said. "It was like homework to me." The book includes passages from her diary as well song lyrics which inform the memoir, and offer glimpses into her creative process.

What surprised me about his memoir is how "sweet" it is. "I wanted it to be sweet," Kristin said. Indeed, "dark and blue and sweet" is a recurring theme, and listening to her talk about Betty Hutton, with whom she had a remarkable college friendship in the mid-80s, her voice takes on those colors. "I feel a little guilty about Betty," she says of the years they were not in touch. (For those of you who don't know, Hutton was a Hollywood star who hit her stride in the 60s, playing Annie Oakley in the MGM movie. Hutton was in her 60s when she attended Kristin's gigs, and gave advice on connecting with an audience.) Hersh paints other characters with equally heartfelt strokes: her parents, whom we might expect to be neglectful or oblivious are instead loving and sweet. Her therapist (Dr. SevenSyllables), whom we might expect to be detached or cluelessly cerebral, is instead empathetic and hip. He "gets" her, and perhaps more importantly, guides her through a pregnancy without drugs. Hersh describes no petty behavior among her band members, although I'm sure there must have been some. These things don't interest Kristen, even as they were undoubtedly of interest to her editor at Penguin.

"She wrote in the margins, EXPLAIN! in big red letters. But I didn't want to write about the boring stuff. I wanted to write about the stuff that interested me." For four years, she wrote from 2:00 am until dawn (insomnia seemed another creative stimulant), then rewrote, erased it all, and rewrote again. "I hate it when people ask me 'what are you working on next?' It took me four years to write this one!"

Following a car crash which left her crumpled on the side of a road, Hersh developed a condition that sounds like synesthesia. As she described it: "I would hear ambient noise as music which sounded like me playing next door." Imagine the everyday background noise in your life arranging itself into the building blocks of songs, sometimes wild or twisted up, other times electrified and flitchy. And that's her music: surprising, haunting, sometimes loud, always compelling.

She also suffers from bi-polar disorder. It's onset, at 18, helped bring about a sort of "Art as Danger" lifestyle, in which Hersh found herself homeless, self-destructive and so creatively alive she almost combusted. Add to this mix an unplanned pregnancy, and you might expect a boiling cauldron of sadness and regret. But this memoir doesn't go where you think it will, doesn't ask what you expect it to answer. Neither depressing or triumphant, it is a glimpse into one woman's creative process by way of the most remarkable year in her life (arguably) as recorded in her diary and music. The memoir doesn't try to make a statement; Hersh sees only concerned with making music. And she puts her money where her mouth is: she found the nonprofit Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders (www.cash-music.com) in which she records and releases music without the aid of a record company. She is entirely listener-funded and makes her music available, free of charge and free to be shared, via CreativeCommons.org.You can download acoustic songs that complement her memoir at www.kristenhersh.com/seasonsessions.

The book is impressionistic. Hersh leaves out as much as she includes, which fascinated me. She never tells us who the father of her child is, for instance (indeed she makes little reference to having sex at all), and I feltl that the question was beside the point. But we wanted to ask, more out of a sense of connection than curiosity. But we didn't ask, and she didn't offer. Rat Girl is not about romance, after all. It is about passion. "Passion for sound, reptiles, old ladies, guitars, a car, water, weather, friends, colors, chords, children, a band, fish, light and shadow.”

Passion that is dark and blue and sweet.(less)

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Oct 24, 2010 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Two weeks ago, if you had asked me to tell you everything I knew about the band Throwing Muses, I would have gone dough faced and dead eyed. "Canadian punk band?" I would have un-educatedly guessed. Somehow this foursome escaped my musical reckoning in the mid-80s.

I would have been wrong. But that wrongness at least says this: One does not have to be a Throwing Muses Head to want to metaphorically rub lead singer Kristin Hersh's memoir "Rat Girl" all over her body in hopes of absorbing a fractio...more Two weeks ago, if you had asked me to tell you everything I knew about the band Throwing Muses, I would have gone dough faced and dead eyed. "Canadian punk band?" I would have un-educatedly guessed. Somehow this foursome escaped my musical reckoning in the mid-80s.

I would have been wrong. But that wrongness at least says this: One does not have to be a Throwing Muses Head to want to metaphorically rub lead singer Kristin Hersh's memoir "Rat Girl" all over her body in hopes of absorbing a fraction of the smarts, words, and ideas directly into one's blood stream. Because science is not yet that sophisticated, I settled for turning the book into an origami version of itself, with at least 30 percent of the pages dog-eared.

This memoir, shelved in the bi-polar section of your local bookstore, is (for the amusement of using an out-of-character word) so lovely.

This is not the gelatinous mess that is a typical celebrity memoir -- to be expected as Throwing Muses is not a typical band. (I can say that now. I've downloaded plenty of its backlog in the past few days. For free. www.kristinhersh.com). Hersh captures 1985, the year Throwing Muses went from a bar band to label magnet in a series of vignettes and song lyrics, snippets pulled from the journals of a 19-year-old.

Blue-haired Hersh is squatting in a dead guy's house, taking college-level classes at a university where her father, whom she calls "Dude," teaches hippie-based courses that start with deep relaxation exercises of the soul-scorching kind. She breaks into backyard pools in the middle of the night to swim laps to combat her insomnia. Her best friend Betty is of AARP membership age, a former Hollywood starlet who imagines she is one wrong turn from an onslaught of paparazzi.

Throwing Muses play gigs at local clubs they aren't even old enough to patronize, and sometimes get stuck paying a cover charge if they walk outside before their set.

Ever since she was hit by a car, Hersh hears music in the white noise around her. And when a song strikes, she must immediately work it out on her guitar.

Throughout the rest of the year she will move with her band mates into an apartment in Boston, space shared with other artists, and with Harvard thugs for neighbors. Hersh is diagnosed as bipolar.Throwing Muses will attract a following and get good chatter from local press. Fans will leave gifts on their door step, and a dude with an international phone number will express an interest in signing the band. And, despite any hint that Hersh has ever seen a naked man, she gets pregnant with the band's baby.

These single serving stories don't make a quote-unquote plot. They are carefully worded, and artfully selected moments in a life -- many that inspired lyrics. They reveal Hersh to be genuinely surprised that Throwing Muses have fans, and even a little ambivalent about it. Her three band mates make just cameos, but they are drawn so tenderly. Not the way one would write about family, but with the soft touch one would use to write about a partner with whom they are truly smitten. (But Hersh kind of treats everyone like this. From the old ladies on the bus, to the junkies at their shows, her default seems to be liking people as much as is possible for a loner).

"Rat Girl" is light on glitz and glamour. (Hersh describes her style as homeless, and her hugest goal is to tour with her band and live out of a van). It is ripe with introspection and imagery. Hersh's voice is so unique and her life so interesting that I imagine reading this book is a lot like what music hounds in the 80s felt when they first heard the band.

(less)

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Oct 14, 2010 Elizabeth Hunter rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

This is a hard one to rate by stars--I found it well-written with a strong voice and some wonderful turns of phrase; it was gripping and hard to put down, even when I really wanted to, and I found myself thinking about Kristin as I went about my day; it was also almost unbearably sad and real at some points.

I think I've become a mom. Even though I had some pretty dicey moments at nineteen (Kristin's age at the time she describes here) and that wasn't the closest period in my relationship with m...more

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Oct 29, 2010 Malbadeen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir-ish

The content of this book tends to fall into three categories: her music, her diagnosed bipolarity and her pregnancy. Being the self absorbed person that I am, I found the pieces of her life that I could actually relate, at least slightly, to be more compelling than the music parts. sometimes I felt she was a little heavy handed with the whole "I've got a musical demon inside me that must be released" type thing, but as soon as she went down that path, she'd quickly turn down a path that I felt w...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Jade rated it 5 of 5 stars

Read this book.
Oh please read it.
This book is the kind that I happen on maybe two or three times a year, the kind that makes me remember, all of a sudden, in glorious enjoyment, why I love reading so much.
Rat Girl is a memoir about Kristin Hersh's nineteenth year. The year she became pregnant and her band scored a record deal. You don't have to know who Kristin Hersh is in order to enjoy the book. I didn't. I'd never even heard of her band, Throwing Muses, before.
The book is a memoir but it read...more Read this book.
Oh please read it.
This book is the kind that I happen on maybe two or three times a year, the kind that makes me remember, all of a sudden, in glorious enjoyment, why I love reading so much.
Rat Girl is a memoir about Kristin Hersh's nineteenth year. The year she became pregnant and her band scored a record deal. You don't have to know who Kristin Hersh is in order to enjoy the book. I didn't. I'd never even heard of her band, Throwing Muses, before.
The book is a memoir but it reads like a novel and it has none of the usual boring crap a coming-of-age novel usually contains. It deals with art, music, the creative process. It deals with manic depression, which, as the doctors in the memoir put it, "isn't called that anymore" (it's called bipolar disorder now). It takes place in Rhode Island, then follows the band when they move to Boston. The book is based on Hersh's diaries, which means the focus is really internal--by which I mean, don't expect main plot, subplot, character's backstories and whatnot. This book is about harsh reality--and at the same time, I know writing that is probably doing it a disservice, because no one wants to read a novel about plain old reality. But Kirstin Hersh's reality is not like anyone else's. It's vivid, so full of life it hurts. And makes you laugh, too (wait til you get to the art therapy scene towards the end of the book).
Rat Girl is also one of the very few books I have nothing against, by which I mean: it never says anything ignorant or discriminatory about men and women, about the poor, about people of colour. It is a deeply honest book in that you can feel it wasn't written to try and rationalise the author's fears or doubts by gross simplification. It's a book that tells a story. About being yourself, fending for youself, about the immensely pleasing things in life, about being mentally ill, about art, having a calling, doing stuff, never being static. It tells you that growing up is not something that happens once when you're a teen, but that it is--or should be--an ongoing process, from your first day to your last. It's a punk book. It's an alternative book, whatever. It's a powerful book. Read it.

[Cross-posted to my Tumblr](less)

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Dec 06, 2011 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me start this by saying Throwing Muses was my go-to band all through my formative girl years. There was something about the crazy music, Kristin Hersh's crazy lyrics, and the womanliness of it all that held my attention for years. It was nonsensical, rough, clever and loud, like me! Easily I would say they are the most important band in my life, even though I'm old now and would rather sit in my house and read than go to a concert. So I'm a bit biased going in to this.

This book was great as...more

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Jul 19, 2011 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, autobio-bio-memoir, music

This is one of those books where I can't explain why I liked it so much. It started out slow and a bit precious, and there are many, many moments throughout where I thought, "Did K. Hersh whitewash herself a bit here? Is she REALLY this nice and this plugged in to the human condition all the time?"

Maybe she is. Who knows. In the end, I didn't care that much about narrator authenticity. I found the book fascinating because it gave me a pretty clear emotional and sensory depiction of what it feels...more

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Oct 16, 2010 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kristin Hersh's "Rat Girl" deconstructs the notion of memoir. The book takes place during only one tumultuous year during the singer's life but it manages to cover so much: Bi-polar disorder, her band Throwing Muse's record deal and recording of their first album and the pregnancy and birth of her first child.

If someone wasn't familiar with Hersh or Throwing Muses and picked up this book he or she would probably be confused. Hersh is vague about a lot of the details on things that exist around h...more

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Oct 05, 2010 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

It was overdetermined that I would love this book, given how much I love Throwing Muses and Hersh's music, but I cannot overstate how well-written and gripping Rat Girl is. The story is so present in each moment that I was surprised by every turn of events, even though I already knew many of the outcomes.

Without draining any of the songs of their animation or mystery, the book gives back story on dozens of Muses songs. My favorite new insight is into "Hate My Way," a song that starts as a caric...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Certain things I love
Spend my time
I guess I'll have to unhook those hooks
This woman literally
Felt she had a hook in her head
Rip it up Live it down
Make it big Keep it clean
Shake it off
Take him off Take it off
Do him good Keep it up
Shake it off
He's a fucking drag
But if you don't then you watch him go
If you can you see it home
You be strong
--Hook in Her Head.

Throwing Muses always kind of confused me -- raw, but also thoughtful and evocative of something both painful and hopeful. And then comes this...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

A MUST read for any Throwing Muses fan, but not only!!!
Anyone born between, oh say, 1964 and 1984...?
If you were ever into the counterculture rock scene, went to shows, played in a band, made honest art, or had hippie parents...
A riveting, honest memoir of an 18 year old woman in 1986, just coming to grips with herself in a post modern world, while her band climbs from local success to their first record deal...
this book is simultaneously heartwrenching and hilarious!
I laughed, I cried, I wanted...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Lisa M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5252, memoir, non-fiction

I am a huge fan of Kristin Hersh. While I enjoy her music- particularly her solo/50 Foot Wave work-- I am primarily a fan of her. I had read interviews/articles about her over the years, and found her creative process fascinating. I was intrigued by her severe bipolar disorder and how it seemed to tie into her creativity. When this book was published I was excited to be able to get a glimpse into a year when these two important things bloomed; it was also the year that she unexpectedly became pr...more I am a huge fan of Kristin Hersh. While I enjoy her music- particularly her solo/50 Foot Wave work-- I am primarily a fan of her. I had read interviews/articles about her over the years, and found her creative process fascinating. I was intrigued by her severe bipolar disorder and how it seemed to tie into her creativity. When this book was published I was excited to be able to get a glimpse into a year when these two important things bloomed; it was also the year that she unexpectedly became pregnant. This book was inspired by a diary Hersh kept for a year. During that year she got diagnosed as bipolar, started recording her first studio album, and had her first pregnancy. In the introduction she claimed that not a lot happened in that year, but that it was a year of beginnings.

The beginning of this memoir was slow for me. Hersh stays faithful to the diary. The first part of her year was certainly unique- she is dedicated to her band, goes to college because her hippy dad is a professor, and is surrounded by some really unique characters- but the plot seemed lacking. We follow Hersh but there is no particular set of actions we are observing, and no tension is built. I was primarily reading still because I find her and her life very interesting. Otherwise, it would not have been as thrilling to me. Throughout the memoir Hersh weaves lyrics that are related to the book. The lyrics span her musical career- they are not just those that she wrote in that year. During this time in the book, the lyrics felt forced. At times they seemed natural: they were the lyrics she was writing, placed next to the story that inspired the lyrics, or to things that happened in that era. But some of the lyrics were from decades after these trivial events. It felt as if an editor liekd the idea of this structure, but would not let it occur organically. The lyrics would pop up at times and felt pretty forced. I really wasn't impressed. I also had trouble with the voice Hersh used. She used a youthful voice. I felt she was trying to force it to create a "hip" experience. While I really enjoyed getting to know more about her artistic life and her hip, cool experiences, I would have appreciated it if she just stuck to an adult voice (assuming hers is different from that presented here.) I would have liked to shed some of the cool experiences and just got to know this person and her experiences on a more serious, emotional level.

The memoir began to pick up when her mania set in. The passages began to shorten quickly, the lyrics were appropriate. It was very frantic. It defined mania perfectly. This is also when tension starts to mount. The plot manifested at this point and the book took off.

I also really enjoyed the passages that discussed Hersh's feelings about creativity, and creativity in relation to commercialism. She discusses what it means to be a true artist (to exist in a certain era, and to make music of that era and make it dirty) and what her band meant to her (she enjoyed making violent music and was happy that others liked it, but would make it nonetheless.)

Overall I walked away feeling like I knew a lot about Hersh. She refrains from some aspects of the book. I wish we could have known more about who funded her Boston apartment. Did she have a job? Did her dad pay for it? These are things that would have showed her life easily. But, I liked that she did not tell who the baby's father was. The circumstances were not described so I don't know what the repercussions of revealing that could have been, but it was nice to focus on her and not the love/sexual part of her life. Overall a good read, although the tone could have been done better. (less)

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Sep 25, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, female-authors, north-america

I remember listening to Kristin Hersh's solo stuff in the early part of the last decade and really enjoying it. I knew she was a member of the band Throwing Muses, but none of it really made sense to me, I just really liked the song she did with Michael Stipe.

Anyway, when one of her close friends died last year, she was mentioned in all of his obituaries as one of his closest friends and it also linked to her twitter, so I followed her. And I learned she released this book. So when Borders was c...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Erika Pierce rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a very different kind of memoir. There are those that are written because the author has an axe to grind (sometimes with great merit) and those which exist in order to create and often inflate an author's identity. This is a less ego driven book which delivers much love to it's well-fleshed "characters" while also illuminating the often tortured thought processes of its incredibly talented author. Kristin Hersh brings something new to the genre. At times, Rat Girl reads like a novel and...more

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Aug 20, 2011 Mandy rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had to read this for book club, and I gotta say, while the premise is interesting, I want those hours of my life back. This was supposed to be an interpretation of a journal she wrote, and instead it reads like shorthand. The minutae are given excruciating detail, and inner ramblings get pages of text, but when something truly remarkable happens ie: getting a record contract, getting pregnant, seeking psychiatric help it's glossed over as though you already know what happened. Since I'm not ex...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Kaelyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'll start by being honest: I picked up this book as a filler, fully expecting to read it once and never think about it again. It was an Early Reviewer book that I've bee neglecting reviewing for years (the shame!). I had no idea who Kristin Hersh was, and had never heard of Throwing Muses. With that said, I really enjoyed this book. The way Hersh writes is unbelievably light and refreshing for a memoir, especially considering the material she's talking about: manic depression, homelessness, tee...more I'll start by being honest: I picked up this book as a filler, fully expecting to read it once and never think about it again. It was an Early Reviewer book that I've bee neglecting reviewing for years (the shame!). I had no idea who Kristin Hersh was, and had never heard of Throwing Muses. With that said, I really enjoyed this book. The way Hersh writes is unbelievably light and refreshing for a memoir, especially considering the material she's talking about: manic depression, homelessness, teen pregnancy, etc. I've never read a memoir, and perhaps even a book of fiction, from which the narrator viewed the world in such a simple, beautiful way. I really enjoyed how she talked about her relationship with music, how it was something out of her control, something that demanded to be expressed. When I first noticed that she interspersed song lyrics throughout the prose, I was disheartened. In my experience that kind of stuff usually plays the role of filler, having very little actual relevance to the story. But in this case, each song snippet served to highlight what was happening at that moment. It was almost like looking at an illustration, because it seemed like just another way to look at what was going on, but through Kristin's eyes. At first glance, her voice seems so naive, and yet as the reader gets to know the book-Hersh better, it becomes apparent that its not naivete at all, but a kind of accidentally enlightened understanding of the world around her and the people that inhabit it. It's not unbelievable the way she describes things, but instead devastatingly hopeful. Even through the terror and doubt of finding out you're pregnant, she describes the baby as a light inside of her that she doesn't want to go out. What I liked most about this memoir is the way it was written. It's vague in some places and explicit in others. You never find out who the father of the baby is. In fact, you never even read about Kristin thinking about men really. But somehow, that information isn't important. It's Hersh's book, it's Hersh's way of telling her story, and I wouldn't have it any other way. A true joy to read, this book will change the way we think about memoirs.(less)

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Jun 01, 2012 Belinda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobiography

This book was recommended to me by a dear friend who is also a big fan of Throwing Muses and Kristin Hersh in general. Boy, am I glad she did. What a fantastic book and a what a fantastic person. This autobiography details the mid 80's period when Ms. Hersh was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, her band, Throwing Muses was starting to be discovered and other life changing things happened. Interspersed are Hersh's lyrics and stories from her amazing childhood as the child of two adorable and slig...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book explains so much. My wife has been a Throwing Muses/Kristin Hersh fan since college, and she turned me on to them many years ago. I remember the first time I saw the band together, and wondered what was up with Hersh's stage presence. Hersh stared off into the distance, shimmying her head gently and deliberately side to side the whole time she was singing. Well, I read this book and learned of Hersh's issues with being bipolar, and with being incredibly shy, and with the fact that song...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Kathleen Maguire rated it 5 of 5 stars

Once again my 5-star rating is a bit narrow. I have loved Throwing Muses since they appeared in Champaign in 1985, and have followed their music since. I was so delighted to finally understand Kristin's odd stage presence. Her lyrics are absolutely obscure, but this memoir does shed a little light. Her manic and depressive periods were/are so intense that I actually had to put the book down on a few occasions. Even if you don't know or like Kristin or Throwing Muses, if you have any interest at...more

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Sep 30, 2011 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me preface this review by reiterating the fact that I have a hard time with female vocalists. For me, many of them blend together into interchangeable background noise. In fact, I can only think of a few female singers that I even like - Joan Baez, Carole King, Mahalia Jackson, Emmylou Harris, and too many classic soul singers (Motown, Stax, etc.) to count. I know it's lame that I can't name check the hottest new indie female powerhouse (Adele? Is that one?) The point is, and with the discl...more Let me preface this review by reiterating the fact that I have a hard time with female vocalists. For me, many of them blend together into interchangeable background noise. In fact, I can only think of a few female singers that I even like - Joan Baez, Carole King, Mahalia Jackson, Emmylou Harris, and too many classic soul singers (Motown, Stax, etc.) to count. I know it's lame that I can't name check the hottest new indie female powerhouse (Adele? Is that one?) The point is, and with the disclosure that I'm sure I'm forgetting some deserving soul(s), there are not that many.
Someone that does belong on that list is Kristin Hersh. Let's face it, her voice sounds like Beelzebub reincarnate snarling and ready to destroy all in her path. At least that's what I hear in her work with Throwing Muses and as a solo artist. With that out of the way, she is not a very good writer. In Rat Girl we are made privy to one year of her life - when she was 19 and the year was 1985. Let's just say some good (Throwing Muses broke), bad (she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder), and life-changing (she became pregnant) shit happened that year. We learn that Kristin was a bohemian that didn't want to be considered bohemian, she loathed "art," yet she describes her voice and the music speaking to her over and over again. Also, there are endless too-cool-for-school exchanges with her and the band. What surprised me was that she was an avid swimmer, shockingly sensitive, and never reveals the father of her child. This is her right, obviously, but I think that a memoir is a category of book that leans to the side of full disclosure on the part of the author. I found her description of living with bipolar disorder and the effect it had on her life very moving and brave. Alternately, I was left wondering who the father was because she depicts herself as almost asexual, or at least indifferent about her attraction to men or women. As the reader, it felt like being told to make yourself at home and then being told that the cookies on the table are off limits. Sorry, maybe it's the People magazine syndrome in me, I just wanted to know who the dad was.
Ultimately, the true power of Rat Girl lies in the behind the scenes peek into the rise of the Throwing Muses from the eyes of its de facto leader. Like most great things, it happened by accident. They didn't give a shit, but the right people did - and we are better for their superior vision. It doesn't matter that Hersh will never win the Pulizter, she was/is an original mind. She does was she wants - still - on her own terms, including writing a memoir that she admits is "riddled with enormous holes and true," and even with my elitist literary objections it was still a fairly interesting read. (less)

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Feb 03, 2011 Daniel Levesque rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished this book almost ten days ago but cannot stop thinking about it. Perfectly began and ended, with just the right amount of information. There's no name-droppy shit here. Just a real story that you or I could have lived (but didn't).

Kristin is a great writer. I almost always cringe when writers make up words, or make contractions out of any word ("Songs're supposed to do this..." "People're always saying...", etc.) BUT with Rat Girl all was forgiven because all was organic. The words in...more

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Dec 06, 2011 gaby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, music

I've been a lifelong Throwing Muses fan. I say that because I got into the Muses when I was about 11 (via older friends who liked to make mix tapes), and their early records are just as resonant to me now, a week before I turn 30, than they were when I first heard them. I don't always like to "pierce the veil" and peek behind the artist through memoir because they are usually exercises in self-indulgence and self-loathing in equal parts. But this was really great. Less a memoir and more an edite...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Not your typical rock memoir. Instead of a career-spanning, tell-all book (which Dean Wareham already perfected in Black Postcards), Kristin focuses on just one year of her life. But, as she says in the introduction, "it was a year where a lot of things began."

The book really gets good when she moves from Rhode Island to Boston, and the Throwing Muses take off and record their first album. This half of the book is full of awesome passages about the music industry, and creativity, which sum up m...more

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