Rat Girl
In 1999 Kristin Hersh played a free in-store performance at the record store where I worked. My roommate, Jason, was ecstatic.
“I love her! I fucking love her!” he gushed.
Not knowing who she was, I skipped it. I probably spent the evening drinking strawberry Mad Dog on our porch, or picking up extra hours at my shitty part-time mall job. But today, having read Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl, I wish I’d gone.
Based on a diary she began at 18, Rat Girl takes you through an important year in Hersh’s life. She moves from Newport, Rhode Island to Boston; her band, Throwing Muses, records their first album; she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder; and she has her first child. Despite all these seemingly big events, in the book’s introduction Hersh claims, “This wasn’t a year when a whole lot happened,” adding, “It was a year when many things began.”
After finishing Rat Girl, it certainly feels like a lot happens. Although only 18, Hersh battles sketchy club owners for the band’s pay, drives to gigs in a van without brakes and describes her vision of an ideal life: living in a van, driving from town to town, making music with her friends. The book also gives an insider’s account of what it’s like to be in a band on the verge of making it big, including dinners with record executives, strangers showing up on your doorstep and the process of writing and recording an album. Hersh is a charming narrator, at once critical of the world, dreamily idealistic and incredibly entertaining.
Hersh was probably touring to support this record when I foolishly skipped her show
Like many artists, Hersh describes worrying about the mysterious origins of her creative ideas. Hersh – at least, the 18 year old version described in the book – has a superstitious belief that being hit by a car as a teenager gave her the ability to write music. In one passage she says, “Music is something I have almost no control over. Like well-rehearsed Tourettes.” Although I’m hesitant to accept Hersh’s mystical explanation for her creativity, having begun listening to her music since reading the book, all I can say is that whatever her creative process is, it’s working.
Perhaps the most unique feature of the book is it’s style, which alternates between first person prose, song lyrics and dreamy vignettes from Hersh’s childhood. Although such unconventional storytelling could have fallen apart in less capable hands, Rat Girl flows seamlessly between the three elements, allowing Hersh to weave together pieces that may otherwise have seemed like fragments. However, the book’s open style also enables her to sidestep some seemingly important questions. For example, she never reveals whether a hospital stay is the result of a suicide attempt and she never says anything about the relationship that resulted in her pregnancy. She also doesn’t explain why, when the book begins, she’s squatting rather than living with her family or one of her many friends. Still, Hersh’s openness, candor and poetic writing style more than make up for any details left out.
The book is fantastic – and a must-read for Throwing Muses fans.
It’s scheduled to be published August 31 by Penguin.
