Horror Stories: A Memoir

mmmmmm I mean I guess for starters I guess I should say I'm not a die-hard Liz Phair fan or anything, but I like some of her music and I've enjoyed reading some of her interviews etc so I figured I'd check out her memoir. But so, not being a HUGE Liz Phair fan some of this was definitely confusing? Each chapter is like a separate essay without really a coherent narrative, which is fine except they also went back and forth in time without clearly stating that would happen? And if I were a person who knew the name of Liz's husband and boyfriends, or the full chronology of her albums, I think I could probably have kept track of time better that way, but...I didn't. So I'm not sure why the decision was made not to just put a year in the title or heading of each chapter? That would have been helpful. Or like, one of the essays is about how vulnerable a particular photo shoot made her feel and yet how great the resulting photos were, and yet despite the book including photos...it doesn't have any of those photos?

I appreciated the emotional honesty here but ended up skimming some of the stories, particularly the ones about her messy love life vs about her career. IDK I know it's sort of common for folks to mention how Liz Phair comes from privilege etc etc like she isn't really an indie artist or whatever, and I think it's shitty to judge her for things like that, or for “selling out” when she began to make more commercial music, but at the same time mostly this felt very...unrelatable.

Perhaps a bigger Liz Phair fan would get more out of this.

Well written, I was sucked into these short stories. Little snapshots of her life, bouncing around in time. Phair doesn't write to make herself look good She's quite honest about her flaws and bad decisions in her past. Not life changing, or my favorite book of the month, but I found it fun and refreshing.