Paradoxical Undressing

Earlier in the week I saw Kristin Hersh, lead singer of Throwing Muses, at the Book Festival. More by accident than by design I saw her on two nights, the first performing some of her songs and reading from her memoir Paradoxical Undressing, and the second reading again and discussing the book with Hannah McGill.

The memoir, based on her diaries, is of a single year of her life when she is eighteen. In that year she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Throwing Muses sign with 4AD and make their first album, and Hersh becomes pregnant. The book is most fascinating when it explores Hersh's creative process - she hears songs, rather than creating them, and feels her best songs are those that she meddles with least - and most moving as it explores her journey through pregnancy and how she struggles to reconcile her protectiveness for her unborn child with an honest response to the 'evil' that she perceives in her music.

In her Book Festival session Hersh talked about the struggle to get the voice right for each section of the book, something she ultimately did very successfully. The voices of the young, vulnerable Hersh of the book's first season and the pregnant Hersh of the final season are particularly well realised. The relationships between the band members and their response to what they see as the absurdities of the music industry are also beautifully portrayed.

In person Hersh was a really engaging speaker and reader, something I didn't necessarily expect given the ambivalent feelings about performing that she portrays in her book. She had originally agreed to a biography but wrote the book herself because she could not bear the alternative of a stranger delving into her psyche and her past. She has clearly fallen in love with writing, with another two books, one a further memoir, currently on the go. On the evidence of this book they will be something to look forward to.