From Powells.com
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Staff Pick
The title of this memoir is no joke. It opens with a dead body, details Phair's affair(s), and never tries to paint the author in a perfect light. It’s as raw and honest as you would expect from her music, if you're into it. Even if you're not, I highly recommend trying her book out anyway. She's a terrific writer. Recommended By Erin K., Powells.com
Always integrating her life into art, Horror Stories is Liz Phair’s collection of heartfelt and candid essays. She reflects on key moments that have continued to linger in her memory: her grandmother’s death, giving birth, and others. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter behind the groundbreaking album Exile in Guyville traces her life and career in a genre-bending memoir in stories about the pivotal moments that haunt her.
When Liz Phair shook things up with her musical debut, Exile in Guyville — making her as much a cultural figure as a feminist pioneer and rock star — her raw candor, uncompromising authenticity, and deft storytelling inspired a legion of critics, songwriters, musicians, and fans alike. Now, like a Gen X Patti Smith, Liz Phair reflects on the path she has taken in these piercing essays that reveal the indelible memories that have stayed with her.
For Phair, horror is in the eye of the beholder — in the often unrecognized universal experiences of daily pain, guilt, and fear that make up our humanity. Illuminating despair with hope and consolation, tempering it all with her signature wit, Horror Stories is immersive, taking readers inside the most intimate junctures of Phair's life, from facing her own bad behavior and the repercussions of betraying her fundamental values, to watching her beloved grandmother inevitably fade, to undergoing the beauty of childbirth while being hit up for an autograph by the anesthesiologist.
Horror Stories is a literary accomplishment that reads like the confessions of a friend. It gathers up all of our isolated shames and draws them out into the light, uniting us in our shared imperfection, our uncertainty and our cowardice, smashing the stigma of not being in control. But most importantly, the uncompromising precision and candor of Horror Stories transforms these deeply personal experiences into tales about each and every one of us.
Review
"Honest, original and absolutely remarkable . . . elegant but unpretentious writing . . . . It's a memoir with an original and fascinating structure. [Phair] mostly avoids writing about her own songs, and while this may seem to be an odd choice, it's actually quite refreshing — her music, she seems to indicate, can speak for itself." NPR
Review
"[A] uniquely thoughtful, self-aware memoir . . . bracing and refreshing . . . Horror Stories is more an archipelago of intense episodes of unknowing with the implicit understanding that life is a wayward, unresolvable business. . . . [A] rigorously open exploration of negative capability." The New York Times
Review
"Like a batch of interrelated Phair songs, each chapter a separate and specific story, all together accumulating into an intimate self-portrait . . . with equal parts elegance, humor, and authenticity." The Boston Globe
About the Author
Liz Phair is a Grammy-nominated singer songwriter whose debut album, Exile in Guyville, is considered by music critics to be a landmark of indie rock. She has been a recording artist and touring performer for over twenty-five years, paving the way for countless music artists, particularly women, who cite her among their major influences. She began her career in the early 1990s in Chicago by self-releasing audio cassettes under the name Girly-Sound. The intense viral response to these early tracks led to Phair signing with the independent record label Matador Records. More than two decades after the release of her debut, Phair's influence in contemporary music can be felt today more than ever. Liz Phair is also a visual artist who majored in studio art and art history at Oberlin College. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic. Horror Stories is her first book.