Rat Girl

Just the other day I was thinking about Kristin Hersh from the late '80s band Throwing Muses and how, when I saw them play live in college, she was six months pregnant.  Then I started thinking about how touring is exhausting and pregnancy is exhausting and how did she ever do both at the same time?  Well wouldn't you know it, now my questions can be answered.  I'm downright gleeful to find out that she has written a memoir called Rat Girl because she was one of my first influences when I was learning to play guitar and write songs at fifteen.  Another great storyteller Mary Gaitskill describes the book as "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 

It's now in my Amazon check out.  You can order it here as well: http://www.amazon.com/Rat-Girl-Memoir-Kristin-Hersh/dp/0143117394/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_1.  The Gilbert Hernandez cover is just the cherry on top but I'll save the genius of the Hernandez brothers for another post. :)